Respect for Marriage Act passes Senate

 The Respect for Marriage Act - securing  by statute the right of same-sex couples to marry - has passed the U.S. Senate.  House approval in the lame-duck session is presumed, as is Joe Biden's signature.  Passage will render moot Clarence Thomas's concurrence in Dobs v. Jackson Women's Health.  The senior Associate Justice there cast doubt on the substantive due process concept underlying rights of privacy and personal autonomy. - GWC

Many who deem same-sex marriage to be wrong reach that conclusion based on decent and honorable religious or philosophical premises, and neither they nor their beliefs are disparaged here. But when that sincere, personal opposition becomes enacted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that soon demeans or stigmatizes those whose own liberty is then denied. Under the Constitution, same-sex couples seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish their personhood to deny them this right.

Justice Anthony Kennedy - for the majority in Obergefell v. Hodges  (2015)view of marriage as between 

The Respect for Marriage Act  H.R. 8404 - 117th Congress

§ 7. Marriage

“(a) For the purposes of any Federal law, rule, or regulation in which marital status is a factor, an individual shall be considered married if that individual’s marriage is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into or, in the case of a marriage entered into outside any State, if the marriage is valid in the place where entered into and the marriage could have been entered into in a State.

“(b) In this section, the term ‘State’ means a State, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or any other territory or possession of the United States.

“(c) For purposes of subsection (a), in determining whether a marriage is valid in a State or the place where entered into, if outside of any State, only the law of the jurisdiction applicable at the time the marriage was entered into may be considered.”.

 But today - in a sign of growing acceptance of same-sex marriage twelve Republican Senators joined the Democrats and passed the Defense of Marriage Act.

This will pose a major challenge for the US Catholic bishops who have adhered to a conservative culture war attitude.