This newspaper is against an amendment to the federal Constitution in respect of same-sex marriage. Our opposition stems from a general feeling that the more matters that can be left to the jurisdiction of the 50 states, the better. We would make this argument with respect to, say, abortion, gun control, the licensing of liquor sales, or laws pertaining to consensual sexual relations among adults. And we would make it all the more ardently in regard to a matter that, like the authority to issue marriage licenses, has been seated at the local level since the early days of the republic. The founders of America were importuned to deal with a lot of things in the Constitution (the right to shoot birds was one of them). But they had the wisdom to resist the temptation to have the founding document govern the details of public policy.

We don’t mind saying that we can understand why President Bush felt it necessary to enter this fray, as he did yesterday, on behalf of an amendment. What, after all, is the point of leaving matters to the states if, when a state acts, as California thought it did, it is met with disobedience by one of its major cities? It is hard to recall an issue in America on which the tactic of civil disobedience has been resorted to by local governments spurning state authority, as San Francisco has been doing. The president was right to recognize that when such a thing start happening, it has to be confronted and dealt with by higher-ranking authorities.

With each ratcheting up of this issue, moreover, we become less comfortable with the terms on which advocates of same-sex marriage are arguing their case. They are escalating efforts to advance the notion that opposition to same-sex unions is a form of discrimination, even bigotry. This line of reasoning ends up marginalizing movements that have been at the center of religious life for centuries. One columnist who has been watching this issue, Rabbi Shafran of the Agudath Israel of America, has been calling attention to the case of a school teacher in Canada who was suspended from his job without pay for writing a letter to the editor of a local paper critical of homosexual relations. We share the columnist’s concern that individuals or communities who adhere to orthodox religious teachings will be “not merely ignored, but vilified, demonized and penalized.”

By our lights, advocates of the notion that equality under the law requires recognition of the rights of gay and lesbian couples are not without some logic. But as Americans struggle to reconcile these competing arguments and interests, we are not convinced that the time has come to abandon the mechanism of the legislature. No one would suggest that courts may never intervene in the great struggles over social issues. The Supreme Court, in Brown v. Board of Education, taught all Americans the majesty of its powers. But it strikes us that there is plenty of room to maneuver on this issue in the local and national legislatures before it makes sense to preempt the legislative process, either through court action by advocates of same-sex marriage or an amendment to the Constitution on behalf of its opponents.