Recently, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature that would have made same-sex marriage legal. Eleven months after last year’s presidential election, it was one of the first times the issue has made major news.

This is what’s called a “wedge issue.” In simple terms, it’s an issue – usually emotionally charged – that is widely debated before an election and then quietly forgotten until the next election. Its only value is in distracting voters.

Same-sex marriage was a major issue in the 2004 election, but it nearly dropped off the face of the earth as soon as the votes were in.

In hindsight, it’s interesting to reflect on how politicians steered us away from real issues. Before the election, President Bush said he wanted to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage. Amending the Constitution is a pretty big deal. It implies a very serious matter. But after the election, same-sex marriage was all but forgotten by politicians. There were some comments made here and there, but there was no serious campaign that reflected the seriousness of amending the Constitution.

This is not to say wedge issues are a property of the Republican Party – both parties use an array of them to distract voters. The Democrats use civil liberties. At first glance this may not be so, but the Democrats actually have a poor record on civil liberties. When the Patriot Act was first passed in the Senate with only one dissenting vote, some Democrats said they had not read the bill before supporting it. Others claimed Bush had tricked them. Then when the Patriot Act was revisited earlier this year to address sunset provisions, it passed the Senate again – this time unanimously. The Democratic excuse: Republicans had strong-armed them.

When President Clinton was in office, and unable to hide behind such excuses, the Democrats were doing the same thing. Under Clinton, they passed a long list of bills suppressing speech rights. Some were mild forms of censorship, like support for the V-chip. More aggressive forms like the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which sought to censor speech on the Internet and was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, were also advanced by the Democratic Party.

Politicians from both parties employ a list of distraction tactics. We hope readers keep this in mind when considering the issues.

Instead of asking our politicians about gay marriage, we should be hounding them about the war, education, jobs, terrorism, the role of government, the plight of agriculture and small businesses, and the list goes on and on.

Voters must demand results on the issues that affect them, not lip service to wedge issues come election time.