Laura Bush Warned George About Gay Marriage

Former First Lady Laura Bush touches on the subject of same-sex marriage in her new memoir, Spoken From the Heart, due Tuesday from Scribner. In the passage, she says that she asked her husband, President George W. Bush, not to make same-sex marriage a “significant issue” in 2004, noting the couple’s many gay friends.

Mike Allen of Politico reports on the passage, which Bush includes on page 303.

“In 2004 the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage,” writes Bush. “Before the election season had unfolded, I had talked to George about not making gay marriage a significant issue. We have, I reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. But at that moment I could never have imagined what path this issue would take and where it would lead.”

In February 2004, President George W. Bush called for a federal constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.