Senate set to pass Respect for Marriage Act this afternoon

-

After the Senate voted to end debate on the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) last night, passage of the bill became all but assured. And now Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) says that the full Senate will vote on the bill as early as this afternoon.

The Senate voted 61-35 yesterday night to end debate on the bill that would overturn the Defense of Marriage Act and require the federal government and state governments to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages performed in other states, overcoming some Republican senators’ filibuster of the bill and allowing it to come to a final vote.

The bill passed a procedural vote before Thanksgiving that set it up to eventually pass the Senate, the chamber where many major Democratic initiatives have died over the first half of President Joe Biden’s term in office. The Senate will reconvene at 12:00 p.m. Eastern time and vote on three amendments to the bill proposed by Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and James Lankford (R-OK). The Senate will then vote on the bill itself. The series of votes are scheduled to start at 3:45 p.m. Eastern time.

If the bill passes the Senate, it will have to go back to the House because of an amendment added by several senators including out Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI). The House is expected to pass it and Biden is expected to sign it into law.

Proponents of the bill say that it’s necessary now that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which shared part of its legal framework with Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that legalized marriage equality in all 50 states in 2015. Justice Clarence Thomas said that the Court should “reconsider” Obergefell in his concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that overturned Roe this past summer.

That is, supporters of the bill believe the Court could be coming after marriage rights next.

Opponents of the bill have said that it would end religious liberty by requiring churches to perform same-sex marriages, something that’s not in the RFMA. Sen. Lee offered an extreme amendment that would greatly expand religious exemptions at the federal level.

“Religious Americans will be subject to potentially ruinous litigation, while the tax-exempt status of certain charitable organizations, educational institutions, and non-profits will be threatened,” Lee said of the RFMA, even though the bill doesn’t expand anyone’s rights beyond the status quo.

Lee’s amendment would need to get 60 votes to be added to the RFMA, which it is not expected to get. Rubio’s and Lankford’s, which deal with the definitions of the word “state,” only need 51 votes to pass.

Sixty-two senators voted in favor of the RFMA in a procedural vote held before Thanksgiving, one more than the 61 who voted to end debate last night. The senator who didn’t vote in favor of it the second time was Sen. Rev. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), who is in Georgia campaigning for reelection in the state’s runoff election scheduled for December 6.



source https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/11/senate-set-pass-respect-marriage-act-afternoon/

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prosecutors decline to charge suspect identified in alleged anti-trans mass shooting

-
Image
Prosecutors in Chicago have failed to charge a suspect identified in photo lineups as the shooter who killed a trans woman and her mother in a home invasion in January . Three other victims were wounded, including two other trans women. The suspect, who remains unidentified because he hasn’t been charged, has two other pending cases in Cook County court, records reveal: a felony residential burglary count and a misdemeanor count of domestic battery. The 19-year-old suspect lives in the same apartment complex as the victims did, on Chicago’s South Side. The police report for the mass shooting details how two people “kicked in the front door and began shooting” at about 1:40 p.m. on January 23. Unique Banks, 20, and her mother Alexsandra Olmo, 43, were killed at the scene. Three other victims were hospitalized in critical condition. One witness told investigators they had seen two males running north from the courtyard building wearing green camouflage. The shooting took place o...
Read more

Census Bureau will start testing new LGBTQ+ questions on its yearly survey

-
Image
The U.S. Census Bureau, after nearly a year of pushing the Biden administration, will begin testing questions pertaining to LGBTQ+ identity on its American Community Survey (ACS). These questions would ask people about their sexual orientation and gender identity. The Bureau put out a Federal Register notice signifying that this is the last chance for the public to give comment on all pending ACS questions, including those pertaining to LGBTQ+ individuals. The deadline given for comment is May 30, with an online form provided for any feedback on these questions. The wording for these questions can be found on the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs website . After the Bureau’s deadline, it will be submitting the questions to the Office of Management and Budget, where they will await approval for testing in the summer. The ACS asks questions about demographic, socioeconomic, and housing-related topics annually. New questions must undergo a rigorous approval and testing p...
Read more

Conservatives are outraged over fake AI images of Target’s Satanic offerings

-
Image
Conservatives were already upset about Target over its LGBTQ+-inclusive Pride collection. But now they’re angry over fake AI-generated images that show the store selling “Satanic” clothing. The images show kids wearing clothes with inverted pentagrams and goat heads and a store display with a red, goat-headed mannequin. The images were created by Facebook user Dan Reese with the AI program Midjourney, Reuters reported . A Target spokesperson told the publication that it “has never sold” the pictured items, and the items aren’t available on the store’s website. Related Stories Brave gay man yells “Praise Satan” & throws Bible in fire at pastor’s book-burning The husbands kissed as congregants screamed in disgust. “That guy has balls of steel,” one commenter wrote under the video. A Facebook page called Christian Patriots posted the images and wrote , “Look at the faces on these children, I feel in my spirit, they even knew there was something satanic with making t...
Read more