Same-sex marriage bill a win for Biden
The US Senate has passed a landmark bill protecting same-sex marriage, as politicians from both parties moved to forestall the possibility of the conservative-led Supreme Court taking away the right as it did with abortion.
“With today’s bipartisan Senate passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, the US is on the brink of reaffirming a fundamental truth: love is love, and Americans should have the right to marry the person they love,” President Joe Biden said in a statement released after the 61-36 vote.
The Senate vote sends the bill back to the House of Representatives, which is expected to move swiftly to approve it and then send it to the White House for Mr Biden to sign.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer hailed a “momentous step forward for greater justice for LGBTQI Americans”. Eleven Republicans joined Democrats to pass the legislation on what had for decades been a deeply divisive issue in America.
Same-sex unions in the US have been guaranteed by the Supreme Court since 2015. But after the court’s historic overturning of a longstanding ruling protecting the right to abortion in June, many progressives feared same-sex marriage may also be under threat.
Democrats worked with urgency to get the bill passed while they still controlled congress.
They held on to the Senate in this month’s mid-term elections but narrowly lost the House of Representatives to the Republicans. So when the new congress takes power in January, gridlock is expected.
The bill passed on Tuesday does not require states to legalise same-sex marriage. But it repeals previous legislation defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman, and does require states to recognise same-sex marriages from other states.
So if the Supreme Court were to overturn the 2015 ruling, a state that bans them will still have to recognise such unions carried out in other states. The bill also applies to interracial marriages.