Biden for great success: US Senate votes for same-sex marriages Western politicians condemn escalation in China and are concerned

It is now considered likely that the text will end up on the desk of US President Joe Biden for the final signature. The House of Representatives has yet to vote on the draft. However, the project should be accepted there, because the Democrats still have a majority in the Congress chamber. If the law overcomes this hurdle, it would be a major win for Biden and his Democrats.

Same-sex marriage was legalized in the United States by a 2015 Supreme Court decision that declared unconstitutional a 1996 law that established marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

However, concerns arose this year when the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court overturned the 1970s Supreme Court ruling on abortion rights. One of the judges, arch-conservative lawyer Clarence Thomas, placed the same-sex marriage decision in a series of rulings that the court must reconsider.

Federal law does not force any U.S. state to allow same-sex couples to marry. But it would require states to recognize all marriages legally contracted elsewhere. It also protects same-sex marriages that already exist if the Supreme Court, which now has a majority of conservative justices, reverses its 2015 ruling. The law also aims to protect marriages between people of different ethnicities. (sda/dpa)