With the backing of President Bush, Republicans in the Senate will this week try to deny the legislatures of the land the right to define marriage in any way save as a union between a man and a woman. They will be doing this at a time when the nation is well advanced in learning the limits of settling social debates by removing the authority of the legislatures. One need cite only prohibition and abortion. It strikes us that a far more logical approach would be for Mr. Bush – and the Senators, for that matter – to focus on confirming judges wedded to the idea of separation of powers and original intent of the founders of America.

The frustration animating the drive for an amendment that would take matters out of the hands of both courts and legislatures is understandable. Those who believe marriage should be defined as a heterosexual union have, over the past several years, seen courts at both the state and federal level chip away at the traditional view. Our sense is that fear of judicial pre-emption, as much as other factors, has fueled popular support for state marriage amendments. It doesn’t help that proponents of gay marriage distort and denigrate as bigoted the religious and cultural precepts that motivate opposition.

But neither does it help that traditionalists seek to engage in their own form of pre-emption by using a federal amendment to end a debate that in some quarters is just beginning. President Bush used his Saturday radio address to defend the amendment as “the most democratic solution to this issue, because it must be approved by two-thirds of the House and Senate and then ratified by three-fourths of the 50 state legislatures.” Yet the same Mr. Bush was asked, during his final debate with Senator Kerry in 2004, whether he thought homosexuality is a choice. His reply: “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

It is unlikely that were all this left to the legislatures America would lurch toward gay marriage. So for those, such as Mr. Bush, who oppose gay marriage, there is an intermediate step of striving to get onto the federal and state courts judges who will respect the authority of the legislatures. That is the right constitutional approach to marriage and almost every other hot-button issue of the day. For Mr. Bush and the Senate to elevate Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Alito to the Supreme Court and then move for a constitutional amendment can be seen as a vote of no confidence in the very judges they worked so hard to empower.