After the historical flip-flop of the Supreme Court on access to abortion, the House of Representatives is active to erect shields around the marriage of same-sex, guaranteed since 2015. The law passed, must now pass the Senate test.
Le Monde with AFP
The House of Representatives voted on Tuesday, July 19, a law to protect homosexual marriage in all of the United States, for fear of returning to the Supreme Court in the matter. The bill received the support of 267 elected officials, that is all the Democrats supported by 47 Republicans, during a vote praised by applause in the hemicycle. 157 Republicans, however, opposed it.
His chances of arriving in the Senate seem more limited since ten Republican elected officials should vote with the Democrats. Only senator Susan Collins has so far been said to do so. His registration on the agenda therefore seems to have the objective of forcing the Republicans to take a stand on this subject which divides their electorate.
A large majority of Americans support marriage between people of the same sex (71 %), including in republican ranks. But the religious right remains mainly opposite. Whatever their position on “Respect for Marriage Act”, the Republicans are therefore likely to be overhang with part of their voters before the mid-term ballot in November.
Protect yourself from retrograde decisions of the Supreme Court
Concretely, the law repeals previous legislation defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman and prohibits civil status agents, whatever the state in which they work, to discriminate the couples “due of their sex, race, ethnicity or origin “. It therefore applies to people of the same sex, whose unions has been guaranteed since 2015 by the Supreme Court of the United States, but also to interracial couples, which the High Jurisdiction has been protecting since 1967.
But the High Court has just made a historic flip-flop on the right to abortion, by canceling, on June 24, the ROE v judgment. Wade which since 1973 guaranteed the right of the Americans to abort in the name of “respect for privacy”.
In an argument accompanying this decision, the conservative judge Clarence Thomas had considered that the right to homosexual marriage or contraception, also based on respect for privacy, should in turn be revised.
Since then, the progressive elected officials of the congress have multiplied the bills. “We cannot remain with a crossed arms while the hard -won gains in the equality movement are systematically annihilated,” said elected Democrat Jerry Nadler. Two texts to protect access to abortion were therefore adopted last week in the House and another on the right to contraception must be voted this week. It is likely that they all buy in the Senate.