(The Center Square) – The U.S. Senate voted Wednesday to end debate on legislation to codify same-sex marriage protections. The procedural action does not fully pass the bill out of the Senate, but sets it up for likely passage later this week with a possible vote Thursday.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling motivated this legislative effort. U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisc., has helped lead the effort. Her office said the “Respect for Marriage Act” would “require the federal government to recognize a marriage between two individuals if the marriage was valid in the state where it was performed.”
Notably, the bill would “guarantee that valid marriages between two individuals are given full faith and credit, regardless of the couple’s sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin, but the bill would not require a State to issue a marriage license contrary to state law.”
“The Respect for Marriage Act is a needed step to provide millions of loving couples in same-sex and interracial marriages the certainty that they will continue to enjoy the freedoms, rights, and responsibilities afforded to all other marriages,” Sens. Baldwin, Susan Collins, R-Maine., Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in a joint statement.
From the bill’s official summary:
Specifically, the bill repeals and replaces provisions that define, for purposes of federal law, marriage as between a man and a woman and spouse as a person of the opposite sex with provisions that recognize any marriage that is valid under state law (The Supreme Court held that the current provisions were unconstitutional in United States v. Windsor in 2013.) The bill also repeals and replaces provisions that do not require states to recognize same-sex marriages from other states with provisions that prohibit the denial of full faith and credit or any right or claim relating to out-of-state marriages on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin. (The Supreme Court held that state laws barring same-sex marriages were unconstitutional in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015; the Court held that state laws barring interracial marriages were unconstitutional in Loving v. Virginia in 1967.) The bill allows the Department of Justice to bring a civil action and establishes a private right of action for violations.
A key sticking point for the legislative effort has been religious liberty protections. Religious liberty advocates fear the bill could be weaponized to target conscientious objectors as demonstrated by lawsuits around the country against florists, bakers and other small businesses unwilling to participate in same-sex ceremonies.
Baldwin’s office has addressed those concerns, claiming “non-profit religious organizations will not be required to provide any services, facilities, or goods for the solemnization or celebration of a marriage.” Critics say any provisions of that kind could still quietly be removed later.
The 12 Republican senators who voted to advance the bill: Roy Blunt (Missouri), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), Susan Collins (Maine), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), Dan Sullivan (Alaska), Thom Tillis (North Carolina), and Todd Young (Indiana).
“The deceitfully named Respect for Marriage Act will be voted on by the US Senate this week, as early as Wednesday,” Franklin Graham, resident of Samaritan’s Purse and son of Billy Graham, said Wednesday. “The bill strikes a blow at religious freedom for individuals [and] ministries [and] is really the ‘Destruction of Marriage Act.’”
Let gays have all the legal rights that married people have, but NEVER call it marriage,,,perhaps Fairyage would work or some other Secular politically feel-good correct sin against the sanctify of the English language, and against the sanctify of a marriage institution created by God for BOTH pleasure and Creation, not Pleasure and defecation, corrupted by men who cannot even look down and determine their own sex half the time, let alone use their bodies as nature designed. Our children are getting confused to the point this nation cannot even produce enough sound minded children to repopulate its ranks of productive humanity, which is a recipe for national failure, hence the desperate need of failed secular socialists to import so many foreign corrupted ditto copies that look and act like productive sane contributing versions of humanity, presenting themselves like the great deceiver himself as Angels of light who only bring darkness and confusion, calling their beguiling clustered thought up bill a “Respect of Marriage act” that respects only that which demeans them. Lust is not love,,,Do not be deceived AGAIN!
2 Corinthians 11:14
And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light.
True Christians need to ask themselves whether they would rather be right with Jesus in a Christian nation or right with Nancy and Chuck and their religion of secular socialism. Those who are not with him are against him.
I could care less what or whom they marry just do not force me to become involved or be part of your beliefs or doings. Just as I respect a person’s particular religious belief I expect them to not involved me or force me to be part of their belief.
Just as the belief that same sex marriage is a right let the same right axtend to those that cannot accept it due to their religious/personal belief.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,”,,,,and forcing the corrupted religion of Secular Socialism to be worshipped on an elevated level over the Christian beliefs that founded this nation, where the worship of the god in the mirror now collectively reflected as god of the wealth and human life force redistributing government, is forced to be over the worship of God the Creator, is just about as unconstitutional as it gets, and the beguiling proffered road of their good intentions that leads to the fall of a nation is now so openly outed as false, in the very secular socialist failing of this political prevacating administration and Potato headed President, that none but the mentally ill or mind drugged in political indoctrination can remain in the controlling grasp of their secular socialist deceptions. Same sex marriage is just one of their tools they use to divide us.
First it was ‘just tolerate us’
Then it became ‘you need to recognize us
Then “you must celebrate us’..
WHEN WILL ENOUGH BE ENOUGH?!?!
WE should have never given that first inch, in the first place…
I feel the answer is NEVER!
My point exactly. What comes next? MANDATING folks marry gay/trans people/date them??
Those names are the RINOs who will support the Democrats on many issues as will the so-called minority leader Mitch McConnell.