Former first lady Laura Bush says she urged her husband to sidestep the issue of gay marriage in 2004... We all know how that worked out!

Bush's new memoir Spoken From The Heart will hit stores on May 4, but both Politico and the New York Times have published revealing excerpts from the 456-page book.

In giving her view on what she calls "the legacy of the 2004 campaign," Bush says she urged her husband not to make gay marriage a major issue.

"In 2004 the social question that animated the campaign was gay marriage," Bush writes. "Before the election season had unfolded, I had talked to George about not making gay marriage a significant issue. We have, I reminded him, a number of close friends who are gay or whose children are gay. But at that moment I could never have imagined what path this issue would take and where it would lead."

Well, imagine no more Laura -- it led to a conflict-ridden American political stronghold that persists daily for those that have to fight for equal rights.

Bush further writes about her shock when Sen. John Kerry answered a presidential debate question about the subject by mentioning that Vice President Cheney's daughter, Mary, is a lesbian. "Beside me, Jenna and Barbara gasped. They were utterly stunned that a candidate would use an opponent's child in a debate."

In the book, Bush also suggests that she and her husband may have been poisoned during the 2006 G8 summit in Germany, when many in the U.S. delegation fell ill.

The former first lady also details the 1963 car accident that left a fellow teenager dead. Bush writes that after the tragedy, "I lost my faith that November, lost it for many, many years."

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