The senators dodge.

ONE of the great political strengths of the liberal coalition is its ability to use the courts to get its way. Its politicians do not have to stick their necks out for unpopular elements of the liberal agenda. The courts take care of those issues. Conservatives who want to counter this maneuver are forced to take desperate measures.

So it was in the Senate's debate over the Federal Marriage Amendment. Ted Kennedy was just about the only senator to say that he actually favored same-sex marriage. Most Democrats claimed that they opposed it--but also opposed doing anything to stop the courts from imposing it. Some liberal gay activists may have resented the Democrats' failure to stand forthrightly with them. But most of them don't mind. They are canny enough to know that if they are going to win on marriage, they will win in the courts, not in legislatures.

Most opponents of the FMA insisted that a constitutional amendment was not necessary. John McCain, another professed opponent of same-sex marriage, insisted that the Defense of Marriage Act would keep same-sex marriage from being imposed on any state. But that act is very limited in scope: It attempts merely to guarantee that states do not have to recognize other states' same-sex marriages. It did not keep the high court of Massachusetts from imposing same-sex marriage, and would not block the other 49 state judiciaries from following its lead. It would not keep the Supreme Court from imposing same-sex marriage on the whole nation, either. McCain's argument is a way for politicians to say that an amendment is premature all the way until the time when same-sex marriage has become a fait accompli.

Nor is there any guarantee that the Defense of Marriage Act, weak as it is, will survive. Hillary Clinton said that the act "has not even been challenged at the federal level." Her statement was incorrect: Already two federal courts are hearing challenges to the act.

Several opponents of the FMA insisted that the amendment would enshrine bigotry. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Pat Leahy were among those who argued that it would make homosexuals "second-class citizens." But if that is the case, it must be that any opposition to same-sex marriage is bigoted and discriminatory. Lautenberg and Leahy should be condemning most of their Democratic colleagues, who claim to oppose same-sex marriage--including John Kerry and John Edwards.

Opponents of the FMA created two additional distractions to keep from having to make the case for same-sex marriage. The first was to pretend that the amendment would keep state legislatures from choosing to establish same-sex civil unions. The original draft of the amendment had given them an opening. It said that courts could not interpret state "laws" to confer the benefits of marriage on same-sex couples; so it was possible to argue that the amendment would keep courts from enforcing any civil-union laws that legislatures passed. But the wording of the amendment was changed months ago. The reference to state laws is gone. This is an invented issue.

The second move was the most common one in the debate: to pretend that there is no gathering judicial tendency to impose same-sex marriage. Time and again, senators said that each state should decide whether to have same-sex marriage. But this supposed "federalism" amounts to letting state courts impose samesex marriage one by one as a prelude to a nationwide ruling by federal courts. The only people asking for the public to enter the debate are supporters of the FMA, who want Congress and state legislatures to vote to ban same-sex marriage. It is the opponents of the FMA who would deprive the people of the states a voice, by letting the courts settle the issue without a public vote. Opponents of the marriage amendment want to talk about federalism, about civil unions--about everything but same-sex marriage. They won this round: The amendment got only 48 votes, and it needed 67. Next time, supporters of marriage as we know it have to make sure that liberals do not get away with dodging the issue. The place to start is on the campaign trail. The president supports marriage, and means to do something to keep it. His challenger says he supports marriage, too, but has declined repeated invitations to do something about it. (He even voted against the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.) This is a legitimate campaign issue, and we hope that the president makes intelligent use of it.