U.S. House passes Bill to protect same-sex and interracial marriages

The Tuesday Talking Points!

Earlier today, the House of Representatives passed the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), while protecting both same-sex and interracial marriages if it passes in the Senate. 

That's a big "if" based upon the current 50/50 split among Democrats and Republicans in the Senate, which is occasionally 52-48 when considering that West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Synema (D), vote with Republicans more than most Democrats would care to remember. Plus, even if the Senate Democratic caucus holds the party line, it is difficult to tell whether 10 Republicans would join with Democrats to ensure the bill's final passage into law. 

Stay tuned…

I was a first year law student back in 1996 when DOMA, a bill that recongized marriage as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife," was passed. The measure was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton due to his own push to the right after Republicans, led by then House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga), began working to fulfill their "'Contract with America" ideals that frowned upon many progressive platform planks, like same-sex marriage. 

In the 25 years since DOMA became law, the social winds have largely changed across the country, in part, due to wider acceptance of LGBTQ communities in pop culture and even among some church denominations. By 2015, when Florida became the 36th state to allow same-sex unions, I stood in awe at the Duval County Courthouse as many same-sex couples emerged from having the unions that they felt in their hearts fully recognized by law. I remember asking myself, “who are we as heterosexuals, with our high divorce rates and whatnot, to tell same-sex couples that they should not have the same legal rights to wed, share insurance and pension benefits, devise wealth, and all of the trappings of heterosexual marriages?”

But I also realized, then and even now, that my views on same-sex marriage are not universally shared even among Democrats, particularly Black Bible thumpin’ Democrats who cannot divorce their own interpretations of God's will regarding marriage, from the secular Constitution and various codes that comprise our system of laws. 

Now, I admit that I was rather surprised today to read that 47 Republican members of the House voted "yes" on the Respect for Marriage Act, especially when considering that social conservatives have worked for four decades to wed church and state into a modern American Christian fundamentalist theocracy. Maybe it was Justice Clarence Thomas's frightening concurrence in the Dobbs decision, the one that overturned abortion rights per Roe vs. Wade last month, that has awakened some Republicans, Independents, and even some center-right Democrats to realize that these conservatives mean to roll back the clock to an era that they long for—one in which women were subservient to their husbands, Blacks were second class citizens with few recognized rights, and the LGBTQ community was deep in the proverbial closet to avoid ostracism?

I find it oddly curious that Justice Clarence Thomas is so enamored with being the “Black Antonin Scalia” that he argues a course on substantive due process that could find his interracial marriage to Ginni Thomas illegal in the near future…

Such is why I push back with all of the rhetorical muster that I can because if conservatives can remove a constitutional right to an abortion today, then the constitutional right to same-sex marriage could be gone tomorrow and other precedents, like the Brown case and school desegregation, and yes, Uncle Clarence Thomas, the Loving case and interracial marriages, could be rendered nullities by the Supreme Court really soon…