Senate passes same-sex marriage bill with 61-36 vote

The Senate on Tuesday passed a bill to protect the right to same-sex marriage, responding in a rare flourish of bipartisanship to a Supreme Court justice’s threat to erase the right.

The landmark Respect for Marriage Act, which also would protect interracial marriage, passed by a 61-to-36 vote in the Senate. It is expected to clear the House — where it passed once already in July — and to be signed by President Biden.

“It’s a great day,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Brooklyn Democrat, told the Daily News. “It’s history. It’s a long, winding but inexorable road toward equality in America. And we made a giant step forward today.”

The passage of the Respect for Marriage Act came as a late victory for Democrats before Republicans take control of the House next year. And it calmed anxieties stemming from the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the June decision that eliminated the 49-year-old federal right to abortion.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that the right to same-sex marriage is protected by the Constitution. But in a concurring opinion in Dobbs, Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to revisit past rulings ensuring the rights to same-sex marriage, same-sex intimacy and birth control.

Thomas is seen as the most conservative member of the court, but his opinion shocked Democrats, who were already reeling from a ruling once seen as unthinkable.

Democrats swiftly pushed the Respect for Marriage Act through the House, but its path in the evenly split Senate proved rockier. Democrats ultimately elected to hold the vote until after the midterm elections in a bid to widen GOP support.

While 12 Republicans backed the measure, many of the Senate’s most conservative members still opposed it, and attempted to pass amendments that would water down protections whenever a person or institution says they oppose gay marriage on religious grounds.

In order to secure the support of a dozen Republicans, the bill’s sponsors accepted an amendment that exempts churches from recognizing same-sex marriages and protects their federal tax-exempt status.

That move won over such groups as the Mormon church, but angered some gay rights advocates who noted that though the Respect for Marriage Act requires states to recognize same-sex marriage licenses, it does not require all states to issue such licenses.

Still, the bipartisan nature of the bill underscored broad and swift shifts in public opinion about gay marriage.

President Biden, who went off the Obama White House’s script in 2012 when he declared his support for same-sex marriage, said Tuesday that he planned to “promptly and proudly sign” the bill once it passes back through the House.

“With today’s bipartisan Senate passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, the United States is on the brink of reaffirming a fundamental truth: love is love,” Biden said in a statement. “Americans should have the right to marry the person they love.”