WASHINGTON: The US Senate on Thursday passed a landmark bill to give protection to same-sex marriage under its federal law, and President Joe Biden has promised to sign it quickly.
A vote in the House of Representatives saw 39 Republicans join a majority of Democrats in a rare show of unity, prompting cheers to ring out on the floor less than 10 days after the The Senate passed the same bill. “Today this House stands proudly on the right to freedom,” Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said just before before the vote.
In June, the conservative-led Supreme Court overturned long-standing abortion rights, prompting lawmakers in both parties to move quickly to stop the court from taking away marriage rights. male and female, as some fear.
The House, which has previously approved similar legislation, needed a vote Thursday to iron out minor differences in the Senate version.
Biden has named marriage equality one of the top legislative priorities and said he would “swiftly and proudly” sign the bill into law. Democrats and others hailed the historic vote.
Nancy Pelosi says the legislation protecting same-sex marriage.
I started my career fighting for the LGBTQ community,” Pelosi tweeted Thursday, “and now one of the last bills I’ll sign as president will make sure the feds don’t object to not marrying someone you see in “look.”
The new law, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, does not require states to legally recognize same-sex marriages, but instead requires states to recognize marriages as long as they are valid and the state where it was made.
It overturned a previous law that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman and also protected couples by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity or race”.
Public acceptance of same-sex marriage has increased dramatically over the past few decades, and polls now show that most Americans support it.
