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Churches around the country on Sunday urged their parishioners to call members of the Senate in support of the Federal Marriage Amendment, which will likely go to the floor tomorrow.

Almost everyone expects the vote to fall far short of the 67 votes needed. (Some sources say it doesn't even have a simply majority yet, with just over 40 Senators promising to vote for it.) But despite this apparent inevitability, dissention continues among supporters over what the amendment should say.

The wording debate is pretty old, but Republican leaders eventually agreed with this text:

Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this Constitution, nor the constitution of any State, shall be construed to require that marriage or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon any union other than the union of a man and a woman.

On Friday, Democrats said they wouldn't block the vote—and here's the key phrase—so long as no changes are made to the amendment.

But that's exactly what some Republicans want to do. They propose dropping the second sentence entirely, to avoid confusion about the status of civil unions.

A widely quoted but unnamed Republican leadership aide says Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has proposed voting on both versions of the Federal Marriage Amendment, with the first vote on the longer text. Democrats oppose this, and say it's evidence that the Republicans haven't thought this through.

"They can't get their act together; that's clearly the case here," Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle told The Washington Times. "They can't agree on one version." He told The New York Times that allowing multiple votes would allow senators to, in the Times paraphrase, "rush in with a flood of other pet constitutional amendments."

But none of these is likely to pass anyway, right? If the point is less about actually passing the amendment than in revealing where fence-straddling legislators stand on gay marriage, what's wrong with multiple proposals?

For more on same-sex marriage the debate over the Federal Marriage Amendment, see Christianity Today's full coverage area.

More on the Federal Marriage Amendment:

Senate same-sex marriage debate:

• Cloturekampf | Even a failed cloture vote will give the country an idea of which senators understand--and which do not--that the definition of marriage is now an unavoidably national issue (Editorial, The Weekly Standard)
• Few attend gay marriage debate | Senate vote looms on proposed ban (The Boston Globe)
• Senate opens gay marriage debate | Heated partisan battle expected (The Boston Globe)
• Senate to debate marriage amendment | The Senate wades into an election-year debate Friday over whether to write into the Constitution that "marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman" (Associated Press)
• 'Wedge issue' isn't grabbing conservatives | Senate vote on constitutional amendment set for Wednesday; ban appears doomed (San Francisco Chronicle)
• New England senators form coalition on gay marriage | At least four of the region's five Republicans will join the six Democrats and one Independent and vote against the proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage this week (Associated Press)
• Senators get earful on gay marriage | Coleman backs ban; Dayton opposes it (Pioneer Press, St. Paul, Minn.)
• Saving marriage | The federal Defense of Marriage Act is unlikely to survive (Joshua Baker & Maggie Gallagher, National Review Online)

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July (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48