from washington post
Considering the volume of work Congress has yet to do before members leave town, the Senate's insistence on considering a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage is telling. Congress has failed to pass a budget resolution or any appropriations bills and remains deadlocked on such important public policy issues as corporate taxation and class-action reform. Yet today, the Senate will take up a cloture vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment. Everyone knows that, in the Senate, the proposed amendment is well short of the votes needed to send it on to the states; even making it to a vote on the merits is highly unlikely. The reason the Senate is moving forward is politics of a particularly crass and ugly sort: Gay marriage has become a national electoral issue. And Republicans believe it is one that can help President Bush, who has come out in favor of the amendment, and make life difficult for Sen. John F. Kerry (D), who not only opposes it but also hails from the very sta! te -- Massachusetts -- whose highest court provoked the current showdown with a decision legalizing same-sex marriage. Precisely because of the weight conservatives have put on this issue, today's vote, despite its preordained outcome, has become deeply important. It requires senators to take a public stand on a question of deep principle: Are they willing to warp the entire American constitutional structure to prevent people who love one another from marrying?