Orlando, Fla. ? President Bush is considering a $1.5 billion proposal to promote marriage among low-income couples that could funnel millions into religious organizations that provide premarital and marriage counseling.

Programs that counsel gay and lesbian couples would be excluded from the plan.

Bush’s proposal, modeled after church-based marriage initiatives in Tallahassee, Fla., and other cities, is already drawing criticism from advocates for gays and the poor, who called it invasive and condescending.

“The average low-income person that I talk to knows that Bush has cut taxes for the wealthy and cut programs for the poor people,” said Brian Kettenring, head organizer in Florida the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. “So now all of a sudden they want to tell them how to run their family lives.”

The president’s proposal, which may be included in next week’s State of the Union address, would be similar to “community marriage” programs, in which longtime married couples mentor engaged couples and those experiencing marital problems. The plan would pay for advertising campaigns that promote the value of marriage; provide premarital education to high school students, cohabiting couples, and parents who are having children out of wedlock.

The point man for the president’s proposal is Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Wade F. Horn — a former Marriage Savers board member.

Before he joined the Bush Administration in 2001, Horn served as founder of the National Fatherhood Initiative and obtained a federal grant to study the effectiveness of the community marriage policy programs.

That study found that the divorce rates in cities that had community marriage organizations dropped by 17.5 percent on average, compared with a decrease of 8.1 percent for comparable cities without the programs.

The president’s proposal, which would be part of welfare reform, would provide about $100 million a year in federal grants to government agencies and nonprofits such as the community marriage initiatives. Another $100 million in federal funds would be available to states as one-for-one matching funds.

Programs that counsel gay couples would be ineligible because of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a “legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.”