Jeb Bush featured in gay marriage ads

WASHINGTON – Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the poster child for gay marriage?

A coalition of civil rights groups that back gay marriage is using photos of prominent couples like the former Republican governor and his Mexican-born wife, Columba, in an advertising campaign marking the 40th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, a U.S. Supreme Court decision that gave interracial couples the right to marry.

The groups say they hope to use the couples and the court case to bolster their contention that marriage is a civil right that should know no bounds – even for those of the same sex.

“We’re honoring and celebrating something that just over 40 years ago some Americans said was immoral and wrong and could not happen,” said Jimmy Creech, the executive director of Faith in America, a gay rights advocacy group that is bankrolling the ad campaign. “We’re celebrating the wisdom that prejudice and bigotry was removed from the law books and Americans were given the right to marry the person they loved, regardless of race.”

The “Freedom to Marry” advertising campaign – to be launched Monday – consists of six ads that will run in two Capitol Hill publications, Roll Call and Politico. They feature photos of interracial couples like golfer Tiger Woods and his wife, Elin, and former U.S. Defense Secretary Bill Cohen and his wife, Janet Langhart, who have authored a book about their marriage, “Love in Black and White.” Couples married to someone of a different ethnicity, like the Bushes, are also featured.

The ads note that 16 states still banned interracial marriages until the Supreme Court struck down a Virginia law in 1967, finding “the freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

“Jeb and Columba Bush couldn’t marry today if discrimination were still the law of the land,” the ad that features the former Florida first couple reads.

Bush didn’t respond to a request for comment. But John Stemberger, an Orlando attorney who is spearheading a petition drive to put a gay marriage ban up for a vote in Florida in 2008, called the ads “a little bit silly.”