US: President Bush has thrown his weight behind campaigners in the US seeking a constitutional ban on gay marriages. It is a move sources close to him have been threatening for some days as the president seeks to energise his conservative base for the November presidential election.
The Republican president expressed alarm at events in San Francisco, where marriage licences have been issued to gays and lesbians, and in Massachusetts, where the state's highest court ruled gay couples have the right to wed.
"If we are to prevent the meaning of marriage from being changed forever, our nation must enact a constitutional amendment to protect marriage in America," Mr Bush said.
In California, meanwhile, the state's attorney general said he would ask the state's top court later this week to bar San Francisco from performing the gay weddings.
Attorney General Bill Lockyer said he would ask the state's Supreme Court on Friday to rule on the issue and told a television interviewer it could be done without an amendment to the US constitution.
San Francisco, long a centre of gay activism, suddenly began defying California law by issuing marriage licences to same-sex couples on February 12th, prompting what officials call the greatest rush into wedlock in the city's history.
The move has resulted in more than 3,200 gay marriages. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has also spoken out against the nuptials that contradict a 2000 voter-approved state law defining marriage as a union of man and woman. President Bush's appearance in the White House Roosevelt Room came a day after he abandoned his above-the-fray position and opened a campaign attack on Democrat John Kerry, who is running to challenge Bush in the general election.
Opponents of same sex marriages argue they would destroy the institution of marriage. Proponents say gays should have the same rights as others to marry and that an amendment would enshrine discrimination in the Constitution.
President Bush called for an amendment "defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and woman, as husband and wife". But he left the door open to states to provide homosexual civil unions and other legal arrangements for the gay community.Gays within Mr Bush's own party expressed opposition. "As conservative Republicans, we are outraged that any Republican - particularly the leader of our party and this nation - would support any effort to use our sacred United States Constitution as a way of scoring political points in an election year," said Mr Patrick Guerriero, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration laid the first charges yesterday against two of the 650 people it is holding at Guantanamo Bay, but does not allege they were directly involved in violence.
The two men, a Yemeni and a Sudanese national, are alleged to have served as bodyguards to Osama Bin Laden. The Sudanese man is alleged to have run guns for the terror group and served as an accountant laundering funds.