US Congress votes to protect same-sex marriage Biggest case of fraud in Germany: Wirecard trial begins

Milestone in the fight against discrimination: The US Congress passed a federal law to protect same-sex marriage. The House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill Thursday by a bipartisan majority. The Senate had previously approved it. Now US President Joe Biden has yet to sign it. US Vice President Kamala Harris spoke of a “historic day”.

For Biden and his Democrats, the law is considered a great success. In the summer, it looked like it would fail in the Senate.

In fact, same-sex marriages were legalized by a 2015 Supreme Court decision. At that time, the judges had declared unconstitutional a 1996 law that codified marriage only between a man and a woman. This year, however, concerns arose that this could be jeopardized if the Supreme Court’s right-wing majority overturned abortion rights.

One of the judges, the arch-conservative lawyer Clarence Thomas, placed the same-sex marriage decision in a series of rulings that the court had to retest – including, for example, the right to contraception. The judge’s words and the court’s ruling had sparked outrage – religious groups, however, welcomed the abortion verdict. Under ex-President Donald Trump, the Supreme Court has moved significantly to the right and has recently often ruled in favor of religious plaintiffs, for example.

From the point of view of civil rights activists, however, the law that has now been passed has one big catch: it does not force any U.S. state to allow same-sex couples to marry. But states must recognize all marriages legally entered into elsewhere. It also protects existing same-sex marriages if the Supreme Court, which now has a majority of conservative judges, reverses its 2015 ruling. The law also protects marriages between people of different ethnicities – for example, between blacks and whites.

The result is a compromise that the Democrats negotiated with the Republicans. Both the Senate and now the House of Representatives achieved a bipartisan majority. In Thursday’s vote, 258 MPs voted in favor of the bill and 169 against. All dissenting votes came from Republicans – 39 Republican lawmakers voted in favor of the bill.

Outgoing Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said she was visibly relieved at a news conference after the vote. Earlier, she sharply criticized the Supreme Court in a guest article in the Washington Post. Even if Judge Thomas’s legal reasoning is “warped and flawed”, the “extremist movement behind him” must be taken at its word. She criticized the increase in discrimination in some Republican-controlled states. Parents seeking sex reassignment treatment for their children would be prosecuted. The teaching staff would be muzzled on the subject of same-sex couples.

For years, lawmakers have tried to pass federal legislation that would establish the right to same-sex marriage and repeal the 1996 law once and for all. So far they have always failed. Polls show that a majority of the American population supports same-sex marriage rights — and so do a majority of Republican supporters. (sda/dpa)