While you're absolutely correct that the relative importance of political issues is subjective, surely informed citizens should be able to arrive at a consensus that some issues are, in fact, more important than others. Here's a partial list:
- Our country's dependence on foreign oil, which leads to entanglements with unsavory regimes and wars in the Middle East
- Our failing education system, which results in a low literacy rate compared to other industrialized nations and ultimately threatens our competiveness in the global marketplace
- The fact that many people in our country lack access to good basic health care (present company excluded, of course
). Our country doesn't fare well in terms of such important public health measures as infant mortality and life expectancy.
- Genocide in Darfur
- AIDS throughout the world, especially in Africa
- Lobbyists for corporations and other interest groups exert undue influence on the political process through campaign contributions
- 2/3 of the Axis of Evil want to destroy our country with nuclear weapons. We seem unable to do much about this, as we are busy sacrificing American lives and spending billions of dollars fighting an insurgency in the other 1/3.
Those are just a few issues off the top of my head that we
should be able to agree are more important than wedge issues such as gay marriage. I'm sure there are others. For each issue, there are many different viewpoints and potential solutions (from Democrats, Republicans, and others). The more we argue about wedge issues, the less we do to address other, more crucial issues.
I'm not saying that I believe people who oppose gay marriage or who bristle at the thought of the national anthem in Spanish are ignorant. I'm just saying that we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that these are mainly just distractions and that other important things also merit attention, especially in November.