U.S. Senate passes same-sex marriage safety invoice By Reuters

By Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Senate handed a invoice on Tuesday that might defend federal recognition of same-sex marriage, a measure taken up in response to worries the Supreme Courtroom may overturn a 2015 choice that legalized it nationwide.

The narrowly tailor-made invoice, which might require the federal authorities to acknowledge a wedding if it was authorized within the state during which it was carried out, is supposed to be a backstop if the Supreme Courtroom acted in opposition to same-sex marriage.

It might not bar states from blocking same-sex or interracial marriages if the Supreme Courtroom allowed them to take action.

The invoice will give “thousands and thousands of identical intercourse and interracial {couples} the arrogance and certainty that they want that their marriages are and can sooner or later proceed to be legitimate,” Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, one of many lead negotiators on the invoice, stated forward of the invoice’s passage on Tuesday.

Baldwin is the primary overtly homosexual particular person elected to the U.S. Senate.

The same, however not equivalent, invoice handed the Home of Representatives earlier this 12 months with assist from 47 Republicans and all Democrats. The Home would wish to approve the Senate model earlier than it’s despatched to President Joe Biden to signal into regulation.

No. 2 Home Democrat Steny Hoyer informed reporters on Tuesday the Home would seemingly take up the Senate’s model of the invoice subsequent week.

In June, the Supreme Courtroom overturned the nationwide proper to an abortion, undoing 50 years of precedent.

In a concurring opinion, Supreme Courtroom Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the court docket ought to think about reversing different choices defending particular person freedoms, together with the 2015 ruling on homosexual marriage.

About 568,000 married same-sex {couples} dwell in america, based on the U.S. Census Bureau.