On Tuesday, President Joe Biden will sign a measure giving same-sex marriage federal rights into law, hosting thousands of guests at the White House to commemorate the legislative victory.
It comes 12 years after Biden, who was Barack Obama’s vice president at the time, publicly supported same-sex unions. This was before the US Supreme Court‘s 2015 ruling making them legal throughout the country.
Long-standing abortion rights were invalidated by the Supreme Court last June, which is now markedly more conservative. Left- and right-leaning lawmakers joined forces to stop any next action to restrict same-sex marriage rights, which some thought would follow.
Last week’s ultimate adoption of the bill by Congress was a rare instance of bipartisanship in the bitterly divided nation’s capital.
According to his spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, Biden will host a celebration on the lawn of the White House with participation from supporters and plaintiffs in marriage equality lawsuits from across the nation.
As the first openly homosexual White House press secretary, Jean-Pierre made history herself. She also praised “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, adding that it “will give peace of mind to millions of them.”
Growing support
Since the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling making same-sex marriages legal across the country, hundreds of thousands of same-sex couples have wed.
Recent decades have seen a sharp increase in public acceptability, with polls now indicating that a sizable majority of Americans approve of same-sex unions.
The religious right and some conservatives continue to disagree, though.
The Respect for Marriage Act, a new piece of legislation, calls for states to recognize marriages that were legitimate in the state where they were performed even though they are not required to approve same-sex unions.
In addition to protecting interracial couples by forcing states to recognize legal marriages without regard to “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin,” it repeals prior legislation that defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
39 Republicans voted in favor of the measure in the House of Representatives, joining a unanimous Democratic majority, while 169 Republicans abstained. It was earlier approved by a vote of 61 to 36 in the evenly divided Senate.