Clinton Says He’ll Visit San Francisco This Weekend Despite Threat of Gay Protests

President Clinton, dismissing warnings of possible gay protests in San Francisco sparked by his opposition to same-sex marriages, said Friday he has no intention of canceling a planned visit to the city on Sunday.

San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown earlier this week urged the president to cancel his appearance because gay and lesbian groups are furious with Clinton for supporting a Republican-sponsored ban on same-sex unions.

Clinton said last week that he would sign the “Defense of Marriage Act” because his position remains that marriage is “an institution for the union of a man and a woman.”

The president plans to stop at the Presidio late Sunday afternoon to assess the progress of conversion of the scenic former Army post to civilian use. He will meet with workers and make brief remarks about military conversion and the environment, White House officials said Friday.

Brown, an outspoken and politically savvy Democrat, told Clinton in a telephone conversation earlier this week “Don’t come,” because gay groups have threatened to disrupt his appearance.

“I think that Willie Brown is a great mayor, but I believe that I should not cancel my trip to San Francisco,” Clinton said Friday. He said he had a “long-standing commitment” to visit the Presidio and to appear at a fund-raising reception for Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Sunday evening.

Clinton received overwhelming financial and political support from gays and lesbians in 1992. And he argued Friday that no president has been as sensitive to gay and lesbian concerns as him. “And I have been roundly criticized for it in many quarters,” he said.

He said that some Republicans are trying to exploit the issue of same-sex marriages “for diverting and dividing the American people and getting into a round of gay-bashing. I am bitterly opposed to that.”

The proposed law before Congress was inspired by a court case in Hawaii that would provide spousal benefits to gay couples there. The law would allow other states to refuse to recognize gay marriages sanctioned by Hawaii.

“From the time I ran for office in 1992, I expressed my position on the whole concept of marriage in the law,” Clinton said. “It’s been my position all along. I can’t change that position. I have no intention of changing it.”

Clinton travels from San Francisco to San Diego, where he will speak on crime and immigration and play a round of golf on Monday.

He will attend two political events in Los Angeles on Monday night and deliver a speech at Glendale Community College on Tuesday, before returning to Washington on Tuesday night after a brief stop in Albuquerque.