Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is teeing up a vote on the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill that would codify same-sex marriage into federal law, which will need at least 10 Republican votes.
The bill has bipartisan support and after a procedural vote scheduled Wednesday, the legislation is likely to pass later this week, or after Thanksgiving recess. The bill needs 60 votes to clear a filibuster, which is it likely to get.
“I want to be clear that passing this bill is not at all a theoretical exercise, but rather it is as real as it gets,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said from the senate floor Monday evening.
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“When the Supreme Court overturned Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that other rights—like the right to marriage equality enshrined in Obergefell—could come next,” he continued.
The top senate Democrat added that he opted to forgo bringing the bill to a vote back in September at the urging of his colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and said he “agreed to wait, because we were given an assurance that enough votes would materialize after the election.”
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Senators Rob Portman, R-Ohio, Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Susan Collins, R-Maine, Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., released a joint statement Monday saying that through “bipartisan collaboration, we’ve crafted commonsense language that respects religious liberty and Americans’ diverse beliefs, while upholding our view that marriage embodies the highest ideals of love, devotion, and family.”
Schumer added that, “because my top priority is to get things done in a bipartisan way whenever we can, we determined that this legislation was too important to risk failure, so we waited to give bipartisanship a chance.”
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“I hope – for the sake of tens of millions of Americans – that at least 10 Republicans will vote with us to protect marriage equality into law soon The rights and dignity of millions of Americans depends on it.” he added.