Federal legislation gives gay marriages a nationwide legal status

The US Congress enshrines same-sex marriage in law. It shows how quickly views on this have shifted in a relatively short time.

What happened earlier this year with the right to abortion in the United States, in any case, will not happen in the future with the right to marry someone of the same sex. Congress passed a historic law Thursday that enshrines same-sex marriage into law, securing it for legal proceedings.

In practice, little changes: same-sex couples have been able to marry each other in the US since 2015, and in the short term there was not really a direct threat to that attainment. But when the Supreme Court abolished the right to abortion earlier this year, alarm bells went off among many supporters of same-sex marriage.

Both abortion and same-sex marriage were allowed in the US not on the basis of legislation, but on the basis of legal reasoning by the Supreme Court. The high courts had recognized a’ right to privacy ‘ in the Constitution, and other rights were then based on that right. But now that the court has had a decidedly conservative composition for a few years, that structure is faltering.

Earlier this year, the High Courts in the abortion case put a line through the previous case law on the right to privacy. Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court justice, even explicitly wrote that same-sex marriage should be reconsidered next. By now ‘just’ enshrining same-sex marriage in law, it is no longer dependent on changing jurisprudence.

Moreover, the fact that Congress passed such a law marks how much views on this issue have shifted in a relatively short time. Several dozen Republicans in the House of Representatives also voted for the law. Previously, more than ten Republicans had already voted in the Senate, so that the law received the required 60 votes.

Such a thing would have been hard to imagine a few years ago, but it reflects a fundamental change of views in American society. Gallup poll figures show that between 1996 and 2021, the percentage of Americans who believe marriage should also be open to same-sex couples rose from 27 percent to 70 percent. The Democratic President Obama did not convert to favor until four years after his election, in 2012. Since 2020, a majority of Republican voters have also been in favor.

All that does not mean that the topic has now gone unchallenged. The debate over the law was emotional at times, and the vast majority of Republican delegates were fiercely opposed as usual. “This is another step towards the Democrats ‘ goal of dismantling the traditional family and silencing voices of faith,” said Vicky Hartzler of Missouri, who nearly burst into tears in the process.