WASHINGTON — The conservative activists who traveled to Loveland, Colo., last summer to meet Rep. Marilyn N. Musgrave had their doubts that the soft-spoken onetime housewife was the ideal flag carrier for the national campaign against gay marriage.
A Republican from rural eastern Colorado, Musgrave had proposed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage just six months into her first term in Washington. It was an issue that social conservatives hoped might become key in the presidential campaign, and they fretted that the woman whose name was on the bill was untested in the national culture wars. But the group came away reassured.
"We left the meeting very encouraged that this could not be in better hands -- more experienced hands, to be sure, but not better," said Glenn Stanton, the nonprofit Christian group Focus on the Family's senior analyst for marriage.
Musgrave, mother of four and grandmother of five, has so far lived up to Stanton's expectations. She has stubbornly, but not stridently, pressed her case for her constitutional amendment -- and President Bush has told Republicans that hers is the version he supports.
As a Colorado state legislator, Musgrave had built a reputation as a champion of controversial proposals to ease gun restrictions, tighten abortion laws and rule out gay marriage. But in Washington, even as she takes on some of the same issues, she has cultivated an image of low-key reasonableness and political pragmatism.
In interviews and debates, Musgrave avoids expressing opinions on homosexuality. Instead, she frames the need for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman as part of the urgency to defend marriage as an institution. She says "activist judges," such as those on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court who ordered the state Legislature to recognize gay marriage, are forcing Congress to protect marriage by taking the drastic step of amending the Constitution.
"Marriage is just this important," Musgrave said in an interview in her congressional office.
But she has displayed a political toughness and ambition rare in a freshman. She stood up to conservative groups that pushed her hard to tighten the language of the amendment to specifically ban civil unions. And when Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.) announced this month that he would not seek reelection in November, Musgrave seriously considered running for his seat before deciding instead to seek reelection to the House.
