Some of last week's bigger headlines featured news from Harrisburg and Washington, D.C., that politicians were working hard at crafting legislation for constitutional amendments to outlaw gay marriage.

The strongest impression made on the majority of the population was that last week kicked off a new season of political pandering in advance of the November election. Even those truly troubled by the prospect of a boom in gay marriages have to be asking themselves if this issue ranks at the top of the issues troubling most Americans.

As other commentaries have noted, millions of Americans are increasingly disturbed by the billions of dollars and thousands of lives being lost in Iraq. Nearly all Americans are worried about escalating gasoline prices in a country with an outdated, petroleum-focused energy policy — and a political establishment unable or unwilling to make significant changes.

Most Americans were angered over the past year's stories involving a disgraced former super-lobbyist who appeared to be buying influence in Congress while raking in millions of dollars from his ill-served clients. Then, about two months ago, when filing their federal income taxes, Americans were reminded how the tax code is overly complex and full of loopholes mostly favoring wealthy corporations that employ armies of lobbyists to get lawmakers to quietly slip multimillion-dollar favors into legislation. And immigration policy continues to be a matter of serious and sometimes contentious debate.

In addition to all of those concerns, millions of Americans are facing desperate circumstances with rapidly rising health care costs and diminished retirement resources.

Yet, with all of this as the backdrop for America in 2006, Congress and the Pennsylvania Legislature have decided it is time to get serious about a gay-marriage ban. And once that issue has served its purpose in stirring up hard-core conservatives — many of whom are dismayed at unconstrained spending of this Congress and White House — the Capitol Hill spotlight will shift to the "national crisis" of flag burning, which in reality is a non-issue.

In Harrisburg, the House of Representatives mimicked the pandering pols in Washington, and neither group is likely to impress many of its constituents with this demonstration of priorities — pandering to some voters in the face of an obvious failure to solve serious problems.

Pennsylvanians are still angry about the sleazy, sneaky and self-serving pay raise vote of last July. Most property owners in the state have judged all recent efforts at property tax reform as failures. And Gov. Ed Rendell's latest magic bullet, the introduction of slot machine gambling, is proving to be problematic while at the same time providing troubling opportunities for graft and political paybacks.

And as voters consider how much lobbyist and favor-seeking money is sloshing around Harrisburg regarding slot machine licenses, Pennsylvanians are reminded that this state is the only state in the nation to not have some form of mandatory lobbyist regulation, registration and restrictions. It's convenient timing, with billions of dollars at stake in the state-controlled awarding of a limited number of gambling licenses.

So with all of these issues begging for serious attention and obvious problems with the state's transportation system, public education system and economic development and job-creation records, our elected representatives manage nothing significant by way of reform. Yet they do manage to put serious effort into gay- marriage bans.

Looking at last week's headlines, Pennsylvania voters have to ask themselves if this is really the most pressing problem facing the state. It seems as though the last time our lawmakers worked this hard on an issue, it was over the package awarding themselves a hefty pay raise.

The Harrisburg crowd, like their cohorts in Washington, D.C., apparently are trying to work a relatively small, core group of voters into a frenzy and at the same time try to distract other voters from their utter failure to accomplish anything of significance that benefits average citizens and taxpayers.

Honest people can have honest disagreements about gay marriage and the threats it might or might not pose to society. But is this really the issue that should be at the top of the agenda in Congress and for the Pennsylvania Legislature?