What Is the Real Reason for the Respect for Marriage Act?

According to the press secretary for the Biden administration, today was a historical day. President Joe Biden signed the so-called Respect for Marriage Act into law, and LGBTQ activists, lawmakers, and drag queens surrounded him during the signing. The President signed the bill with the following words: 

Today is a good day. A day America takes a vital step toward equality, for liberty and justice, not just for some, but for everyone. Toward creating a nation where decency, dignity, and love are recognized, honored, and protected.

We’re here today to celebrate their courage and everyone who made the day possible. Courage that led to progress we’ve seen over the decades, progress that gives us hope that every generation will continue on our journey toward a more perfect union.

Our elected representatives spent the past six months writing, debating, and passing the Respect for Marriage Act even though the law was unneeded. The Supreme Court ruled on June 26, 2015, that states cannot ban same-sex marriages in a 5-4 decision. The court action made same-sex marriage legal across the United States. According to James Howell, “This action established a new civil right for the homosexual community, and granted a long-awaited victory for gay rights advocates on a national level.” 

If the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, why did our elected representatives waste time working on this bill when there are so many other critical issues taking place? Why did they work on the same-sex marriage issue when issues like the millions of people pouring over our border will have long-term effects on our nation? The only reason that comes to my mind is that the bill does more than protect same-sex marriage. I wonder what that reason is. 

How Safe Are People of Faith Who Believe in Traditional Marriage?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the Respect for Marriage Act that passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday with a vote of 258-169. Since the bill has already passed the U.S. Senate, it now heads to the desk of President Joe Biden. According to Gillian Richards, the bill seeks to codify the legalization of same-sex marriage into federal law. It has also displeased Republican lawmakers who consider it to be a threat to religious liberty. 

“It’s an absolute abomination with respect to … religious liberty,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, told reporters after a press conference on his Texas border plan this Thursday. “It’s purposefully undermining religious liberty.”

Richards reported that Roy tried to amend the bill in the House that would have protected the religious liberty of those who believe in traditional marriage - a union of one man and one woman. However, House Rules Committee Chairman Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass.) kept the amendment from moving to the floor of the House in Monday’s hearing. Roy made the following comments in a separate interview with The Daily Signal.

“Today, Congress passed a law that violates the very core of the First Amendment, the Constitution, and the rights we hold dear as Americans,” he said. “The so-called Respect for Marriage Act will result in predatory, activist lawsuits against good people of faith for simply living out their lives in line with their beliefs.”

“The anemic religious liberty protections in the Respect for Marriage would be laughable if the stake weren’t so high,” he added. “In good faith, I offered a common-sense solution, identical to the bipartisan amendment offered by Senator Mike Lee. It would have prohibited the federal government from discriminating against Americans based on their views on marriage, but Democrats on the House Rules Committee blocked it.”

Roy framed the bill’s passage as “another example of how Congress is broken.”

“Before the Rules Committee hearing on Tuesday, not a single committee held a hearing, heard from witnesses, or deliberated the details of this legislation,” he said. “Until we fundamentally change how we do business here, we will continue to fail the American people.”

“I offered an amendment,” Roy told reporters Thursday. “They shut it down on a technicality under a budget point of order.”

Both the U.S. Senate (61-36) and the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Respect for Marriage Act without any amendments to protect people who believe that marriage is a union between one man and one woman. However, proponents of the bill say that there are protections for “religious service and solemnization of marriage.” Nevertheless, the bill holds no guarantees that this provision will protect people of faith, according to Roy.

In strong language, Roy called the twelve Republicans who voted for the bill in the Senate “stupid or deceitful.” He called the bill “an abomination.”

 

What Will Be the Results of the Respect for Marriage Act?

As reported by Mary Margaret Olohan at The Daily Signal, the U. S. Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act today, but the final version did not include “a vital amendment that conservatives had pushed to protect religious freedom.” The supporters of the bill claimed that it has plenty of protection for religious liberty, but opponents warned that the bill “puts a giant target on people of faith.” United States Senate Passes Radical Respect for Marriage Act (dailysignal.com)

The first thing that the new legislation does is to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The second thing that it does is to require those “acting under color of state law” to recognize same-sex marriages. A third thing is that it “orders the federal government to recognize marriages that are deemed valid by one or more states.”

Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee urged Senators of both parties to support his amendment that would create “a strict policy that the federal government can’t discriminate on either viewpoint of marriage, whether same-sex or traditional.” His amendment failed 48-49 on a Tuesday vote. The amendment had a 60-vote affirmative threshold.

Twelve Republican Senators voted to advance the legislation, and they also voted for the final passage of the bill: Senators Roy Blunt (Missouri), Richard Burr (North Carolina), Shelley Capito (West Virginia), Susan Collins (Maine), Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming), Rob Portman (Ohio), Mitt Romney (Utah), San Sullivan (Alaska), Thom Tillis (North Carolina), Joni Ernst (Iowa), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska), and Todd Young (Indiana).

The same twelve Republicans Senators except Susan Collins (Maine) voted for Senator’s Lee amendment. Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) also voted for Lee’s amendment. Two other amendments – one by Republican Senator James Lankford (Oklahoma) and one by Republican Senator Marco Rubio (Florida) – failed, both with votes of 45-52.

Lee sent a letter to the twelve GOP Senators last week and emphasized that his amendment would “ensure that federal bureaucrats do not take discriminatory actions against individuals, organizations, nonprofits, and other entities based on their sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions about marriage by prohibiting the denial or revocation of tax-exempt status, licenses, contracts, benefits, etc.”

Lee added, “It would affirm that individuals still have the right to act according to their faith and deepest convictions even outside of their church or home.” He tried to convince them to not vote for the final bill unless his amendment was added to it. “The free exercise of religion is absolutely essential to the health of our Republic…. We must have the courage to protect it.”

Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation stated, “Members of Congress who voted for this bill and claim to support religious liberty are either naïve or don’t understand the laws they are passing.” He continued:

Despite polling showing that their constituents oppose this legislation, they refused to adopt Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s amendment that would have protected the religious freedom of millions of Americans without taking away a single benefit or legal entitlement from same-sex couples.

As a result, the tax-exempt status of religious schools and nonprofits is now up for debate. Additionally, the Left will try to use the bill to sue faith-based adoption agencies and contractors to drive them out of business as they have done in multiple states and localities already.

It appears that tyranny against religious organizations and people will continue to grow. Americans have twelve Republican Senators to thank for this monstrosity. If they had withheld their votes for the final bill, Lee’s amendment or a similar one might have passed.

What Does the Respect for Marriage Act Do?

The topic of discussion for this Freedom Friday concerns the same-sex marriage bill being pushed through the U.S. Senate. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the bill previously, and twelve Republican senators worked with Senate liberals to move the bill forward in the Senate.

Many people are question why the Republicans were willing to work with the Democrats to push the agenda. Roger Severino of The Daily Signal laid the blame on certain people and faith organizations for putting “a giant target on people of faith.” Two of the organizations that he blamed are the National Association of Evangelicals and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He wrote that the two organizations “gave defecting senators enough political cover to vote against the interests of the people who put them in office.” The two organizations are not the only places where he put blame.

Additionally, a subset of these advocates, including law professors I respect, raise sophisticated legal arguments purporting to show that the bill actually improves the state of religious liberty in America. This piece demonstrates why this view is grossly wrong. As I and others have argued for years, marriage is the exclusive, lifelong, conjugal union between one man and one woman, and any departure from that design hurts the indispensable goal of having every child raised in a stable home by the mom and dad who conceived him.

Severino refused to speculate as to why some of the faith voices who were once opposed to same-sex marriage have flipped on the issue. He believes that they decline to press the sociological, biblical, and biological arguments favoring conjugal marriage. He said that the arguments for entrenching Obergefell v. Hodges in national law “must be judged on their own merits and they demand a thoughtful and serious response.” He discussed seven claims about the proposed Respect for Marriage Act and his response to each of them.

Claim No. 1: Because the bill’s findings characterize beliefs in man-woman marriage as worthy of respect, the legislation would provide religious institutions legally significant protections against being treated by government as the equivalent of bigots.

Response: False. First, the issue is not the ability to believe in man-woman marriage, but the ability to live out those beliefs meaningfully in society and not be labeled a bigot by the government for doing so….

Claim No. 2: The bill can’t be used as a basis for the Internal Revenue Service to deny the tax-exempt status of religious organizations that adhere to and act upon their beliefs in man-woman marriage.

Response: False. Although the bill clarifies through a rule of construction that it does not, by its own operation, revoke tax-exempt status for dissenting religious organizations, it gives ample grounds for the IRS and any other tax authority to do the actual dirty work….

Claim No. 3: Democrats’ marriage bill can’t be used as a basis for government bureaucrats to deny grants, licenses, accreditation, or contracts to religious organizations that adhere to and act upon their beliefs in man-woman marriage.

Response: False. Identical to the question of tax status, although the bill wouldn’t by its own operation revoke licenses, grants, accreditation, or other benefits for religious organizations that hold fast to man-woman marriage, the bill similarly fails to provide any affirmative defense to prevent bureaucrats from using it as a basis for revoking those organizations’ tax-exempt status….

Claim No. 4: Because the proposed Respect for Marriage Act explicitly would preserve application of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, this concession and existing court precedents are enough to address any potential harm to religious liberty.

Response: False. Although it is some consolation that the sponsors didn’t explicitly strip protection under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act from the bill, it is cold comfort. Neither that 1993 law nor the Supreme Court’s decisions in the Fulton and Masterpiece Cakeshop cases would prevent targeting faith-based organizations, including schools and adoption agencies, along the lines discussed. That’s because the bill before Congress sets the stage for courts finding a compelling national governmental interest in eliminating same-sex marriage “discrimination.”

Claim No. 5: Because the Respect for Marriage Act, if passed, would apply to private parties only when acting “under color of state law,” the risk is minimal that religious organizations would be deemed government actors. But even if they are deemed state actors, they already would be bound by the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling in the exact same way as under the legislation.

Response: Partly true, partly false. Yes, the risk that an average religious institution would be deemed a state actor is rather law; however, the question is fact intensive. Religious nonprofit contractors that provide, for example, supervised housing for immigrant families detained on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security, adoption services on behalf of government agencies, or prisoner rehabilitation services mandated by a criminal court might be deemed sufficiently governmental to limit a religious organization’s freedom on marriage questions that could arise in each of those settings.

Claim No. 6: The proposed Respect for Marriage Act, if passed, would provide additional protections for explicitly religious organizations to decline to participate in same-sex marriage celebrations and would bar activist lawsuits on this question.

Response: True, but largely irrelevant. If the First Amendment means anything, it means that government is barred from ordering a house of worship to solemnize or celebrate a same-sex marriage within its chapel, church, synagogue, or mosque. Such lawsuits would readily lose, and any subsequent attempts to relitigate the question eventually would lead to sanctioning of lawyers for filing frivolous lawsuits….

Claim No. 7: The legislation, as amended, would not recognize polygamous marriages.

Response: True and false. The latest version of the bill would not grant federal recognition of “marriages between more than two individuals,” which would cover unions where three or more persons are married to each other’s one family unit.

But the bill leaves open the possibility that one person can be in multiple two-person marriages at the same time, which would trigger federal recognition if a state legally were to recognize such consensual, bigamous unions as separate family units.

Severino concluded that “Tolerance and mutual understanding are not achieved by putting people who believe in man-woman marriage on the same plane as people who reject interracial marriage. That is precisely what the Respect for Marriage Act would do, despite no appreciable risk of same-sex couples’ losing any legal status or benefits.”

What Will the Respect for Marriage Act Require from Americans?

            Same-sex marriage is back in the news after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Most people would not have made the connection between same-sex marriage and abortion if Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives had not rushed through a bill to codify same-sex marriage into federal law.

            The House-passed Respect for Marriage Act has now gone to the U.S. Senate for consideration, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has promised to bring it to a vote. Gillian Richards reported that conservative leaders sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) requesting that the Senate reject the bill. The reason given is, “The Act, which was suddenly rushed through the House without any public hearings or input, is an attack on millions of Americans, particularly people of faith, who believe marriage is between one man and one woman.” 

More than 80 conservative leaders and Alliance Defending Freedom signed the letter. According to Richards, these leaders believe that “the bill would threaten the religious freedom rights of individuals and groups across the nation if it becomes law,” while at the same time doing “nothing to change the status of, or benefits afforded to, same-sex marriage in light of Obergefell.”

The signers include Michael Farris, president and CEO of Alliance Defending Freedom; Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation; Ryan T. Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center; Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council; Craig DeRoche, president and CEO of the Family Policy Alliance; and Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family….

The authors of the letter noted that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito correctly predicted the Obergefell ruling would “be used to vilify Americans who are unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” as the justice wrote in his dissent to the 2015 case.

The Respect for Marriage Act, the conservative activists argued, could “require federal recognition of any definition of marriage without any parameters whatsoever.” They also fear that the bill, should it pass the Senate and be signed into law by the president, would encourage left-wing activist groups to sue individuals and organizations who do not conform to HR 8404’s definition of marriage.

     In addition to the letter, the Conservative Action Project released a separate statement

yesterday to urge the senators to oppose the Respect for Marriage Act. According to Richards, this statement cited previous lawsuits. It referred to the case of Barronelle Stutzman who declined to create floral arrangements for a same-sex wedding and was sued by Washington State. Her case was managed by Alliance Defending Freedom who petitioned the Supreme Court to accept her case in 2017. The high court declined twice to take her case, and she retired after the second appeal.

             The statement also cited the cases of bakers in two states. Jack Phillips (Colorado) and Aaron and Melissa Klein (Oregon) were sued for refusing to make design cakes for same-sex weddings. Richards explained that the authors of the statement fear that there will be more such cases. “The Court’s decision in Obergefell unleashed religious freedom violations across the land, launching a new era of harassment and coercion of millions of Americans who hold a sincere religious belief or moral conviction that marriage is, or ought to be, between one man and one woman.”

The Conservative Action Project’s statement garnered signatures of more than 80 conservative leaders, many of whom also signed the Alliance Defending Freedom’s letter to McConnell. The signers include Edwin Meese III, Ronald Reagan distinguished fellow emeritus at The Heritage Foundation; the Family Research Council’s Perkins; and Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project.

According to the statement, the Respect for Marriage Act would not only “increase the threat of legal liability for those who decline to affirm same-sex marriage, but it would help cement a ‘national public policy’ on same-sex marriage that would have drastic consequences.”

Commenting on the coalition letter to McConnell, Farris remarked:

Despite claims from its sponsors, the so-called ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ doesn’t simply codify the Obergefell decision. It forces the federal government to recognize without limit any marriage definitions that a state adopts.

It also empowers the government to punish millions of Americans who hold decent and honorable beliefs about marriage – beliefs that have existed since time immemorial – exposing citizens to predatory lawsuits and even endangering the nonprofit status of faith-based organizations.

            I did not see The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints listed as signing the letter. However, the Church of Jesus Christ has long fought to preserve traditional marriage and the family. In 1995, the First Presidency and the Quorum of Twelve Apostles published “The Family: A Proclamation to the World.” After defining marriage as being between one man and one woman and explaining the importance of marriage and family, the proclamation gave the following warning: 

We warn that individuals who violate covenants of chastity, who abuse spouse or offspring, or who fail to fulfill family responsibilities will one day stand accountable before God. Further, we warn that the disintegration of the family will bring upon individuals, communities, and nations the calamities foretold by ancient and modern prophets.

We call upon responsible citizens and officers of government everywhere to promote those measures designed to maintain and strengthen the family as the fundamental unit of society.

            I encourage you to join with me in prayer and supplication to God that He will be with the senators. Please join me in praying that the senators will recognize the damage that will be done to our society by codifying same-sex marriage and that they will reject the Respect for Marriage Act. May God bless America and Americans!

What Is the Purpose for the Respect for Marriage Act?

            Democrats appear to be putting up a false fight for same-sex marriage. The Democrat-backed Respect for Marriage Act would formally repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The 1996 law recognized marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife.” 

The 1996 law – and all state laws protecting such marriages – was “effectively invalidated by the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges. This decision legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Although the 1996 law was still on the books, it was deactivated by the Obergefell v. Hodges decision.

So, why are Democrats taking legislative time to write and pass the Respect for Marriage Act? Also, why did 47 Republicans support the bill?

The genius known as Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and serving as Judiciary Committee Chairman, explained the following during the floor debate in the House: the bill would “reaffirm that marriage equality is and must remain the law of the land.” Democrats passed the bill in response to the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court because they fear that Obergefell v. Hodges (legalized same-sex marriage) and Loving v. Virginia (1967 decision that outlawed state bans on interracial marriage) will face Court challenges.

If Obergefell v. Hodges (possible) and/or Loving v. Virginia (questionable) could be overturned, what is to stop the Supreme Court from ruling that the Respect for Marriage Act is unconstitutional? I see the Court ruling on a states-right basis whether it is a law or a previous decision of the Supreme Court.

It seems to me that passing such a law is an invitation for someone to challenge it. The Supreme Court does not rule on laws that are not challenged. However, they do rule on challenges that question constitutional rights. If the Court did not find a “privacy right” when ruling on Roe v. Wade, how can it find one in a ruling on Obergefell v. Hodges?

Even though the Court has not overturned many laws passed by Congress, it has done so. If there is no constitutional right for same-sex marriage, does it matter if it is overturned by a decision on federal legislation or a previous Court decision? Marriage is like abortion in that it is not mentioned in the Constitution. In addition, same-sex marriage does not have a long history of societal approval. The Supreme Court sent abortion back to the states for further debate, and it could send the marriage question back to the states.

I am not surprised that the Democrats would throw up another “hail Mary” attempt to distract voters from the Democrat-caused dismal conditions in America. I am surprised that any GOP members would support. More than 75% of GOP members in the House voted against the bill.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) put the matter plainly before the vote: “Tonight, a large number (a majority?) of the @HouseGOP is poised to vote FOR formal, legislative recognition of gay marriage while hiding behind interstate recognition of interracial marriage (a solution in search of a problem), allowing Dems to deflect from their failures.”

           Rep. Jody Hice (R-Georgia), tweeted: “Today I voted NO on H.R. 8404, the ‘Respect for Marriage Act.’ It’s a slap in the face of our federalist system that is just the latest effort to impose their leftist agenda on the entire country.”