WASHINGTON — The Senate on Tuesday passed landmark legislation that would codify federal protections for marriages between same-sex and interracial couples, with Democrats winning enough votes to overcome opposition from most Republicans.
the Law of Respect for Marriage it passed 61-36, with unanimous support from Democrats and 12 GOP votes after defeating a filibuster and rejecting three amendments offered by Republicans opposing the bill.
The measure now returns to the House for a final vote before it can go to President Joe Biden, who has said he hopes to sign it into law.
“With today’s bipartisan passage in the Senate of the Respect Marriage Act, America is about to reaffirm a fundamental truth: love is love, and Americans should have the right to marry the person they love,” he said. Biden in a statement.
The Senate vote reflects the rapid growth in public support for legal same-sex marriage, which reached a new high of 71% in Gallup Tracking Polls in June, up from just 27% in 1996, when Gallup first began polling the issue.
“We’re making a really positive difference in people’s lives by creating the certainty that their ability to protect their families will last,” said Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wisconsin, the bill’s author and the first openly gay lawmaker. elected to the position. the Senate, she told NBC News.
baudouin reviewed the measure to win some Republican votes by adding language clarifying that religious organizations will not be required to perform same-sex marriages and that the federal government is not required to protect polygamous marriages.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said before Tuesday’s vote that he was wearing the same tie he wore at his wife and daughter’s wedding. “It’s personal to me,” he told reporters.
For some Republicans, backing the bill has caused pushback.
“My days since the first closing vote on the amended Respect Marriage Act have involved a painful exercise in accepting admonishment and some rather brutal soul-searching, entirely avoidable, I might add, if I had simply chosen to vote ‘no.’” Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, one of the Republican Party supporters, told the Senate floor.
“I, and many like me, have been vilified and scorned by some who disagree with our beliefs. They do not withhold bitter invective. They use their own hate speech to make sure that I, and others who believe like me, are hated and despised by them,” he added.
The legislation came after the Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down the constitutional right to abortion, raising fears that justices may also review their liberal precedents enshrining marriage rights for gay and interracial couples.
The bill would require the federal government to recognize marriages that were valid in a state when they were performed. It would also ensure all benefits for marriages “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.
But if the bill becomes law and the Supreme Court strikes down the right to same-sex marriage, Americans could go to another state and get married if it’s not legal in their state.
“This will ensure that wherever you live, if you get married in a state where it’s legal, they have to recognize it wherever you are,” said a Democratic adviser familiar with the legislation. “And you have the same rights, benefits and responsibilities. and freedoms wherever you are.”
Schumer kept a lengthy procedural vote open Monday as Democrats sought to reach an agreement with Republican senators who threatened to drag out the process unless they received votes on the amendments. The camera had prepared three of them: a for Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on a 60-vote threshold, and two each for Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who needed only a simple majority to pass . After they failed, the bill was passed.
One Democrat, Sen. Raphael Warnock, missed the vote as he campaigns in Georgia for next week’s Senate runoff against Republican Herschel Walker.
Most Republicans opposed the legislation, though previous procedural votes made it clear that the bill had enough Republican support to pass. Supporters wanted to pass the measure in the lame duck session before Republicans take control of the House on January 3.
frank thorp contributed.