President Biden is slated to sign the Respect for Marriage Act into law Tuesday, granting federal protections to same-sex and interracial couples, and marking a milestone in the decades-long fight for marriage equality.
Thousands are expected to attend the South Lawn signing ceremony, which will also include musical guests and performances in “a celebrated event,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.
“The Respect for Marriage Act … will give peace of mind to millions of LGBTQ+ and interracial couples who will finally be guaranteed the rights and protections to which they and their children are entitled to,” Jean-Pierre said. “The legislation also enjoys support from a majority of Americans across party lines and faith.”
The landmark legislation passed the Senate last month and the House last week with strong bipartisan support: 12 Republican senators and 39 GOP House members joined all Democrats and independents in both chambers to pass the bill.
Biden said in a statement last week that Congress had restored “a measure of security to millions of marriages and families” after the Supreme Court in June ended the right to abortion after nearly 50 years, and Justice Clarence Thomas said the court should also reexamine cases that set precedent on LGBT rights.
“[Congress has] also provided hope and dignity to millions of young people across this country who can grow up knowing that their government will recognize and respect the families they build,” Biden said.
The Respect for Marriage Act will not force states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples but will require that people be considered married in any state as long as the marriage was valid in the state where it was performed.
The bill also will repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. In addition to defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, that act allowed states to decline to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. That law has remained on the books despite being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court’s 2013 ruling in United States v. Windsor and its 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, which guaranteed same-sex couples the fundamental right to marry.
The signing underscores a nearly three-decade evolution, from 1996 when President Bill Clinton (D) signed legislation that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, to the 2004 election when President George W. Bush (R) used the issue to energize GOP voters, to the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) last week spoke about how fitting it was that the Respect for Marriage Act would be the last piece of legislation she signed in a bill enrollment ceremony as House speaker. Her first speech on the House floor in 1987, she recalled, was to call on her colleagues to take leadership in the AIDS crisis.
The legislation is personally and politically significant for Biden as well. In 2012, when Biden was vice president, he memorably declared his unequivocal support of same-sex marriage ahead of then-President Barack Obama, who had said his views were “evolving.”
“The good news is that, as more and more Americans come to understand, what this is all about is a simple proposition: Who do you love?” Biden said then in an interview. “And will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out. It’s what all marriages at their root are about, whether they’re marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals.”
Democrats have warned since June that federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages, as well as other rights, could be at risk after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which for nearly 50 years had guaranteed the right to an abortion in the United States.
In his June concurrence with the decision to overturn Roe, Thomas wrote that the high court should also examine previous rulings that legalized the right to buy and use contraception without government restriction (Griswold v. Connecticut), same-sex relationships (Lawrence v. Texas) and marriage equality (Obergefell v. Hodges).
“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” Thomas wrote. “Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ … we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents.”
Thomas’s opinion set off alarm bells among proponents of marriage equality, who pointed out that if the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell, as it did Roe, then the right to same-sex marriage would similarly fall to the states. Currently, 35 states have statutes or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage that would take effect if Obergefell were overturned, according to the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ equality.
“When that case [Dobbs] came down, it sent shudders through the LGBTQ community for sure because it really put at risk the certainty that their marriages that are recognized today would be recognized in the future, should the Supreme Court revisit Obergefell,” Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), the first openly gay person elected to the Senate, said in a Washington Post Live interview Monday.
Still, a bipartisan group of senators negotiated to delay a vote on the bill until after the midterm elections and to work on the religious liberty amendment to ensure its passage. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who was part of that bipartisan group, last week praised her colleagues for their relentless work to get the bill passed, recalling how on Thanksgiving Day she was basting a turkey and texting lawmakers about the bill at the same time.
In a Washington Post Live interview, Collins said family members, constituents and friends who were in same-sex relationships began reaching out to her after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, expressing “a real sense of concern that there was now a cloud over their marriages.” She said she was heartened that the House had passed an earlier version of the Respect for Marriage Act over the summer with a strong bipartisan vote, but knew it could still be an uphill battle to get the bill passed in the Senate.
“In talking with my Republican colleagues, and with Tammy, I felt that if we could come up with some language that would make it clear that we were not in any way weakening religious liberties … that we could in fact get the bill over the finish line,” Collins said.
Republicans who opposed the bill decried it last week as an affront to “biblical” definitions of marriage. Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) warned without evidence that it could lead to the legality of “polygamy, bestiality, child marriage, or whatever!” in the future. GOP lawmakers also played down the threat to marriage equality and said the bill was unnecessary, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion rights.