The United States Congress approved this Thursday a bill that shields at the federal level the same-sex marriage and protects you from discrimination should the Supreme Court decide to revoke that right.
The House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, validated it by 258 votes in favor and 169 against, after the Senate had ruled in the same vein on November 29 with 61 positive votes and 36 negative.
The bill is now pending the ratification of the president, Joe Biden, to enter into force.
The legislation encourages the federal government to recognize marriage between two people of the same sex if it is legal in the state where they were married. The same principle applies to interracial weddings.
The text also recognizes religious freedom, avoiding that religious institutions such as Churches can be forced to celebrate these weddings and that they lose benefits or tax exemptions for not doing so.
This last point was part of an amendment introduced through a bipartisan agreement in the Senate, which meant that the text now had to return to the House of Representatives for its final vote after the latter had already approved it in July with 267 votes to favor and 157 against.
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The bill also revokes the Defense of Marriage law passed in 1996, which defines it as a union between a man and a woman.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in the United States since June 2015 when the Supreme Court declared laws that prohibited it unconstitutional in some states.
But the mobilization around the defense of these unions recently gained momentum after the Supreme Court, now controlled by a conservative majority, repealed the sentence in June “Roe vs. Wade”which for almost half a century protected access to abortion in the country.
Since then, a large number of activists and progressive politicians have warned of the possibility of the court doing the same with other rights, such as same-sex weddings, returning to the states the power to set whether or not to allow it.
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This fundamental right is under real, direct and urgent threat
The bill does not establish the Gay marriage as a federal law applicable throughout the country, but in the event that the Supreme Court were to revoke its doctrine, it would prevent states where it was no longer permitted from discriminating against homosexual couples married in other states.
The president of the House of Representatives, the Democrat Nancy Pelosi, admitted this Thursday that this fundamental right is under “real, direct and urgent threat”, and maintained that the approval of the regulations that protect it is “a glorious triumph of love, of freedom and dignity for all”.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
*With information from EFE
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