Gay Groups

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It should come as no surprise that longtime gay-rights advocate Bette Midler is very much in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. After all, the Divine Ms. M. got her start warbling in the basement of the infamous Continental Baths gay bathhouse on New York's Upper West Side in the late 1960s.

So few were surprised to see Midler's name signed to a flowery e-mail that has been making the rounds -- with hundreds of copies pouring into the White House. People are forwarding the e-mail to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. as a form of protest of President Bush's proposed constitutional amendment forbidding gay wedlock.

Part of the e-mail reads: ''On the steps of San Francisco City Hall, rose petals and champagne, suits and veils, horns honking and elation in the streets; a celebration of love the likes of which this society has never seen.''

Though Midler thinks ''it's beautifully written, heartfelt and impassioned,'' she tells the New York Daily News there's an itsy- bitsy problem with the e-mail.

''I am not its author.''