(April 2, 2013) — As wars rage in the Middle East, North Korea threatens nuclear obliteration and graduation nears at Clark, there is just one thing on the national attention: gay marriage. Hundreds of blogs and millions of people watched intently as the United States Supreme Court gathered, deliberated, and prepared a ruling.

Amidst countless serious issues, the entire country was focused on one, likely to be ineffectual, court ruling. The problem is that people have short attention spans and a big need to be involved. No one cares about the boring issues that really have large effects.

Instead, they focus on the few issues that are easy to show support for. They have the desire to do good, but not the ability to expand the desire to those causes that everyone is involved in. However, next year many who invested themselves into the Prop. 8 ruling will have forgotten what it even means. We already forgot about Kony.

Yes, gay marriage and Ugandese children are important, and people should definitely be involved in promoting them, but it is not okay for people to pick and choose which causes they care about while not educating themselves on the country and world at large. If you are going to style yourself a political activist, learn something about politics and activism first.

In addition, involvement can’t, and shouldn’t be limited to simply retweeting your favorite rhetoric or changing your profile picture on facebook. If you care about something, go vote for it. If you can’t vote for it convince someone else to. Looking back, the political decisions that will continue to frame debates and elections won’t be the swift, reactionary changes about gay marriage or gun control.

They will be larger, overarching decisions that change the way the country works. Boring, but important things like tax laws and health care plans. All these other things can be discussed, but can’t be allowed to distract. It’s not that these issues and laws aren’t important. It’s just that we must be careful to not let pet causes and quick-to-pass ideas dominate our news and our minds, because in the long run, that’s not what we’ll remember.