Leading Foe of Gay Marriage Shows Mettle

"I came to Congress with goals in mind, really wanting to accomplish something," the 56-year-old Musgrave said. "I'm going to be very tenacious."

Her stubbornness has frustrated some conservatives and alarmed some of her opponents.

"I think she's shown a lot of courage and heart in taking the lead" on a constitutional amendment, said Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, which is affiliated with Concerned Women for America. But he said Musgrave should press to ban civil unions. "You either think homosexuality is wrong or you don't," he said.

Knight also warned Musgrave against pushing for floor votes this year, before she has had time to build adequate support.

"We don't know of a case in which an amendment has been brought up, defeated, then brought up again," Knight said. "Once an amendment is defeated, it is pretty much gone."

But for those who think Musgrave can be pressured to change or postpone it, her pastor has a word of warning: "They don't know Marilyn."

For 12 years, Ben Baughman, the minister at the First Assembly of God Church in Fort Morgan, a farm town of 11,000 people, has watched Musgrave balance her roles as homemaker and politician. A close friend, he describes her as "an enigma," a woman who "is a gracious lady, loving," and at the same time "strong as can be."

Her church, Baughman said, teaches that gay marriage "is not what God had planned." But he said the church is not "anti-homosexual." "We're anti-sin," he said. "We are compassionate toward anybody who is a sinner."

Musgrave insists that the fast pace of events is improving her long-shot amendment's chances of earning the two-thirds votes needed to pass in the House and Senate this year.

Unless Congress steps in, Musgrave says, the Supreme Court may eventually strike down the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

"If we redefine marriage, anything goes," she said. "You could allow polygamy, group marriage."

Musgrave has come a long way since growing up in what she has said was an impoverished family in Weld County. A former substitute teacher, she began her political career by running for the school board. She and her husband of 36 years, Steve Musgrave, own a hay-baling company.