As this editorial is being written, our offices at the Gay & Lesbian Times are inundated with press statements celebrating the failure of the Federal Marriage Amendment to pass in the Senate – at least in this go-round. The measure was defeated in a July 14 vote of 48-50 against amending the US Constitution – the same one ratified by our forefathers in 1788 with the idea of equality for all. We’re getting press statements not only from GLBT groups, but also groups like the ACLU, the National Black Justice Coalition and People for the American Way.

The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s Executive Director Matt Foreman says simply that the measure has failed to catch fire among Republicans. Since being gay is not inherently a partisan thing, and many Republicans now have personal family and/or friends that they know are in gay and lesbian relationships, it’s not surprising that the issue isn’t catching fire. Even Lynne Cheney – wife of Vice President Dick Cheney and, of course, mother to Mary – came out and publicly said this week that she doesn’t support the FMA.

Nevertheless, this issue isn’t likely to go away either. Some reports indicate the Republicans may put the amendment before Congress for a vote this fall, just before the November elections, and numerous states have upcoming votes on marriage equality. In fact, it seems that one of the few people really able to get worked up about the amendment is President Bush, who in his July 10 radio address stubbornly continued the offensive, saying to the American people, “What they do in the privacy of their house, consenting adults should be able to do. [Insert Texan accent here.] This is America. It’s a free society. But it doesn’t mean we have to redefine traditional marriage.”

But as Andrew Sullivan eloquently pointed out this week in a New Republic editorial, the history of marriage through the ages is a history of redefinition and evolution; in the 1,000 years after Christ, Sullivan writes, marriage was not a sacrament but merely a secular definition for property ownership; marriage for centuries didn’t allow for divorce; and in recent decades we’ve redefined marriage to include relationships between blacks and whites. The institution has clearly been strengthened by its ability to culturally evolve; societal structures are more effective when they adapt to the needs and rights of the individual citizens that make up that society.

But while Sullivan’s, and all of the American activist organizations’, comments are very welcome, no one is asking the big elephant-in-the-room questions, or at least they’re not this week.

Questions like this: When we are a nation at war; when 100,000 military from San Diego alone are deployed to risk their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq; when the families of those San Diego service members are back at home waiting in food lines because they can barely afford to put food on the table with the salary our government provides them; when the San Diego wife of a deployed service member waiting in a San Diego food line says to a reporter on “Now with Bill Moyers”, “We just look forward to getting whatever we can get”; when reports say the 230,000 returning wounded veterans are having to wait six months for an initial doctor’s visit, while the government is closing seven veterans’ hospitals nationwide; when the most recent US Census Report figures show that 12.1 million American children live under the poverty line, which is conservatively drawn at $18,400 for a family of four; when Paul E. Peterson, director of Harvard’s Program on Educational Policy and Governance, reported earlier this year that by age 17 American students score below all “but a few developed countries” on math and science scores; when 46.3 million Americans, including 8.5 million children, are estimated to have no health coverage whatsoever – what reasonable leader would choose to focus, at this time and place in the history of America, on an offensive against same-sex relationships?

And while we’re asking questions – it’s bad enough that Republicans would take something as sacred as our equal rights to play with as a political wedge issue in an election year, but what about the tremendous waste of talent and resources that have been spent fighting this issue? During yesterday’s debate alone, how many senior citizens had to make a difficult choice between food and much-needed prescription drugs; during yesterday’s debate alone, how many young girls were denied access to Planned Parenthood’s counseling services; during yesterday’s debate alone, how many young people were infected with HIV because of funding cuts to HIV/AIDS services; during yesterday’s debate alone, how many young children went without proper healthcare coverage; during yesterday’s debate alone, how many young Americans were killed or wounded in Iraq? How, in fact, can Republicans bringing this kind of debate be anything but ashamed of themselves? Compassionate? We don’t think so. Who are the truly patriotic Americans?

These are big questions. The answers, we suspect, are even bigger.