Bishops asked to lobby senators on marriage amendment

July 15th. the U.S. Senate will vote on the Federal Marriage Amendment. That doesn't leave much time to contact our senators. Call or write them today. Urge them to support the FMA, 67 votes are needed for passage. Only 1 in 5 senators who claim to be Catholic (24 in all) actually support this bill. Believe it or not,15 of those 24 senators are currently opposed to the bill, and four more are undecided.

Here are the senators currently opposed to the bill:

Joseph Biden (D-DE)
John Breaux (D-LA)
Maria Cantwell (D-WA)
Susan Collins (R-ME)
Tom Daschle (D-SD)
Christopher Dodd (D-CT)
Richard Durbin (D-IL)
Tom Harkin (D-IA)
Ted Kennedy (D-MA)
John Kerry (D-MA)
Mary Landrieu (D-LA)
Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
Patty Murray (D-WA)
John Reed (D-RI)

Four senators are still, undecided. They are:

Mike DeWine (R-OH)
Lisa Murkowski (R-AK)
John Sununu (R-NH)
George Voinovich (R-OH)

Catholic senators who support the FMA. They are:

Jim Bunning (R-KY)
Pete Domenici (R-NM)
Peter Fitzgerald (R-IL)
Sam Brownback (R-KS)
Rick Santorum (R-PA)

The Federal Marriage Amendment reads, "Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union between a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups"