President Joe Biden will sign a bill granting federal protections to same-sex marriage into law on Tuesday, gathering thousands of guests at the White House to celebrate the legislative milestone.
It comes 12 years after Biden; then Barack Obama’s vice president, took a public stance in support of same-sex unions, long before they became legal throughout the United States in a 2015 US Supreme Court decision.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision last June to overturn long-standing abortion rights, lawmakers from both parties banded together to prevent any subsequent move to restrict same-sex marriage rights, which some feared.
The final passage of the legislation by Congress last week was a rare display of bipartisanship in deeply divided Washington.
To mark the occasion, Biden will host a gathering of Republican and Democratic lawmakers, as well as advocates and plaintiffs in marriage equality cases from across the country, according to his spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
Jean-Pierre, the first openly gay White House press secretary, also mentioned: “musical guests and performances to celebrate this historic bill.”
“Millions of LGBTQI+ and interracial couples will finally be guaranteed the rights and protections to which they and their children are entitled,” she said of the legislation.
– Growing support –
Since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the United States, hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples have married.
In recent decades, public acceptance has grown dramatically, with polls now showing that a large majority of Americans support same-sex marriage.
However, some conservatives and members of the religious right remain opposed.
The new law, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, does not require states to legalize same-sex marriage, but it does require them to recognize a marriage that was valid in the state where it was performed.
It repeals previous legislation that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, as well as protecting interracial couples by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin.”
In the House of Representatives, 39 Republicans joined a bipartisan Democratic majority in support of the bill, while 169 Republicans opposed it. It was previously approved by a 61-36 vote in the Senate.
– ‘Who do you love?’ –
According to Jean-Pierre, Biden will emphasize on Tuesday that “much more work needs to be done to protect LGBTQI+ individuals across the country.”
According to Biden’s spokesperson, the 80-year-old Democrat was one of the first American political leaders to publicly support same-sex unions at the highest levels of government.
When Obama’s White House was still looking for the best way to make the president’s position official as he sought reelection to a second term in 2012, Biden caused a stir by candidly declaring his support for same-sex unions.
“I am completely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men marrying women all have the same exact rights,” Biden said at the time in a televised interview.
“Who do you adore?” “Who do you love, and will you be loyal to that person?” Biden stated. “That’s what people are discovering about all marriages at their core.”
Following his election in 2020, Biden appointed Pete Buttigieg to the position of Transportation Secretary, making him the first openly gay person to be confirmed by the Senate.
Beyond marriage, the Biden administration has taken a strong stance in support of LGBTQ rights, particularly for the transgender community, whose fight for greater rights has become a political flashpoint in the country.
The administration has implemented gender-neutral passports, which allow people who identify neither as male nor female to select the gender “X,” and it has lifted a ban on transgender people serving in the armed forces, which was imposed by Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump.
