So the lame duck session will see Republicans help Democrats codify gay marriage. States would no longer be able to deny gay marriages, regardless of what one’s religious objections may be.
Several Senate Republicans are prepared to join Democrats in approving a measure that would help advance the pro-gay marriage agenda.
While the Supreme Court already forced all states to allow and recognize same-sex marriages in its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, earlier this year, House lawmakers, including dozens of Republicans, passed the Respect for Marriage Act, a measure that would enshrine into law a prohibition against states refusing to recognize marriages from other states on the basis of factors such as sex and race.
The legislation would bar states from denying “full faith and credit to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State pertaining to a marriage between individuals, on the basis of the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals,” according to the measure.
A bipartisan group of senators is pushing an amendment to the Respect for Marriage Act, which includes language that is supposed to protect religious liberty — those lawmakers, who include GOP Sens. Rob Portman of Ohio, Susan Collins of Maine, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Democratic Sens. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, issued a statement promoting their version of the measure.