This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2004, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

In politics, as in life, timing is everything.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate are pushing hard to get a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage to the floor by July 12. That would force Sen. John Kerry to vote on the controversial issue on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, which will begin in Boston two weeks later to cement his presidential nomination.

At least that's the way the Democrats see it. And frankly, that is the most likely explanation for the Republican rush to judgment.

Why else would Sen. Orrin Hatch, the Republican chairman of the Judiciary Committee, withdraw his own effort to draft an alternative to the proposal favored by his party's leadership? And why else would the Senate leadership abandon the traditional practice of vetting various contenders for a constitutional amendment in that committee before sending a recommendation to the floor?

The Republicans reply that this is not about politics at all. It may be about timing, but, they say, the Democrats have got it all wrong.

The problem, according to the Republicans, is that the Supreme Court of Massachusetts has ordered that same-sex marriages be allowed in that state, those marriages have been performed there, and soon other states will be asked to recognize them.

The trouble with that argument is that the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which has been on the books since 1996, permits states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages in other states. It has not yet been tested in court. Eventually, the issue could be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, which could find the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. But that is not going to happen anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the Congress should take the time to deliberate carefully any proposed tinkering with the Constitution. That is not what is happening under the current timetable.

The Republicans can argue that amending the Constitution is itself a time-consuming process. An amendment must pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority, and then be ratified by the legislatures of three-quarters of the states. So, they say, there is no time to lose.

But it is doubtful that the Republicans have enough votes for the current proposal to win a favorable recommendation from the Judiciary Committee, and it is even more doubtful that it could win the 67 votes necessary to pass the Senate.

Fortunately, there appear to be enough senators of both parties who recognize that a constitutional amendment is a grave step that should be avoided unless all other remedies have been exhausted. They also can see that the American people are nowhere near reaching that kind of consensus.

Only time, and thorough debate, will produce that.