Protecting marriage

On Wednesday, the Senate fell 18 votes short of the two-thirds majority required to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The mainstream media joined Sen. Edward Kennedy in calling the entire debate a distraction from the nation's business and a wedge with which to divide Americans.

Since the main business of Congress is to devise ever more ingenious ways (earmarked and non-earmarked) to waste taxpayers' money, any distraction from the main business is welcome. As for dividing Americans, who came up with the idea of radically altering the most ancient of all social institutions in the first place? Until the last few years, every civilization known to man has defined marriage as between people of opposite sex. To charge with "divisiveness'' those who would do nothing more than resist a radical overturning of that norm is a sign of either gross partisanship or serious dimwittedness.

And that partisanship and dimwittedness obscured the rather interesting substance of the recent Senate debate. It revolved around the two possible grounds for the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment: federalism and popular sovereignty.

Charles Krauthammer

Therefore, there is no need (yet) to disfigure the U.S. Constitution with a policy amendment.

Well said, Charles.