The Federal Marriage Amendment is coming up for debate in the Senate. I am largely in Andrew Sullivan's camp on this one, although I do not share his willingness to threaten a Kerry vote over the ill-considered and narrow decision to push this crap for the sake of a bigoted base. As little as I love the FMA, I value the prospect of a second Bush administration, and a hard war more.

I am, however, quite willing to vote against my Senators. They're disposable. Help me remind them of this political fact by emailing Arlen Specter and Rick Santorum.

Yes, I recognize the futility of appealing to Santorum's federalist principles, but there is a virtue in following the proper forms, regardless of their likely outcome. Specter, on the other hand, is truly on the fence on the matter. He just went through a bruising fight with a hard social conservative over this very sort of issue, and might be tempted to play up to us here in "Alabama". (I know social conservatives who are threatening to vote for his Democratic opponent because they're still pissed about the primary.) The more emails he gets with a strong message of how much that might hurt him from the heart of "Alabama", the less likely it is that he'll tack right with a "harmless" yes vote on this abomination.