US President George W. Bush plans to endorse a constitutional ban on gay marriage in response to a Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling requiring legal recognition, The Washington Post reported today.
In November, the Massachusetts high court ruled that homosexual couples have a right to marry. The same court ruled last week that nothing short of marriage, including civil unions, would comply with its earlier ruling.
Mr Bush plans to make a public statement shortly endorsing a constitutional amendment proposed by Colorado Republican Ms Marilyn Musgrave that would define marriage in the United States as the union of a man and a woman, the newspaper said.
"We'd like to see Congress take it up, and the president will be supportive," a top Republican official told the newspaper. "We would like to see both chambers act sooner rather than later."
The authors of the proposed constitutional amendment say it is a compromise that would not stop state legislatures from allowing civil unions, The Post said.
Mr Bush said in his State of the Union address last month that a constitutional ban on gay marriage might be needed if "activist judges" ignored public will, but he stopped short of immediately urging an amendment as sought by many of his conservative backers.
Socially conservative groups at the core of Mr Bush's political base have placed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages at the top of their agenda for this year.