The still Democrat-controlled House of Representatives sent their Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) to the White House to be signed into law in a galling attempt to thwart both the incoming Republican House majority and undercut the power of the U.S. Supreme Court.
The misnamed act not only runs contrary to religious beliefs — and some fear would actually make Christian views a punishable offense — but also violates the principle that marriage is not a federal matter and is an institution regulated chiefly by the states.
The bill passed 258-169-1 with 39 Republicans joining the entire compliment of Democrats to pass the bill, according to D.C. newspaper The Hill. Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens was the lone representative to vote present.
The Senate had already passed its version of the bill in November, with 12 Republican senators defecting to the Democrats to support the measure.
This latest vote on the bill is the second time the House has passed the measure. When the initial version of the bill passed the House over the summer, 47 House Republicans joined Democrats in favor of the bill.
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Why was this act rushed through in a matter of a few short months? Because the Democrat Party is aiming to take away the power of the incoming GOP majority to have any chance to address the issue, for one.
But also because they fear the U.S. Supreme Court will act on the matter.
As The Hill noted, the Democrat push for the bill started after the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Roe v. Wade in June. In particular, what Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the ruling also started sounding the alarms.
“In a concurring opinion to that ruling, Thomas called on the court to reconsider Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that enshrined same-sex marriage as a constitutional right,” Hill staff writer Mychael Schnell wrote.
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The Hill added that, “Thomas’s statement — and seeing a landmark case overturned — set off alarm bells among Democrats that LGBTQ rights were in danger.”
The RFMA repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which declared marriage to be between one man and one woman and allowed states to reject marriages that other states ruled valid. While that law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2015 in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, it had remained on the books even so.
The bill also requires that states recognize gay marriage even if the SCOTUS overturns Obergefell.
Unsurprisingly, Democrats celebrated the passage of the act.
“Today we will vote for equality and against discrimination by finally overturning the exclusionary, homophobic Defense of Marriage Act and guaranteeing crucial protections for same-sex and interracial marriages,” Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, a co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, said.
“By passing the Respect for Marriage Act we will ensure that all Americans continue to be afforded the same rights by the government, no matter what the Supreme Court may decide in the future,” Cicilline added.
The RFMA is no defense of marriage, but instead enshrines a corruption of marriage. The concept of marriage in western law has always been an agreement between a man and a woman aimed at insuring the family unit and an act vital to the preservation of morals and civilization. Gay marriage does not achieve any of those goals except through artificial means.
Clearly, the main purpose of the RFMA’s quick passage is to take power away from the states as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. Further, it is an overt act to undermine the court before the court even has any chance to hear such a case.
After all, the SCOTUS doesn’t just hand out edicts. They have to wait for a suitable case to be brought to them. In other words, there is no guarantee that the SCOTUS would ever even hear a case that would overturn Obergefell. Indeed, it took fifty years to get the proper case to overturn Roe!
The RFMA is a Democratic power grab, plain and simple. Not only is it an effort to thwart the SCOTUS, but this bill also had to be pushed on a super extradited time frame to make sure it is signed into law by a complicit president before the GOP majority takes control of the House.
It’s abundantly clear that the Respect for Marriage Act has no respect for the American legal institutions and its checks and balances.
