The ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ Deserves No Respect

Jul 23, 2022 by Jill

By Andrew T. Walker and Carl Trueman, National Review:

The cravenness of Republicans who are looking to ‘move on’ from supposedly divisive ‘social issues’ will deserve their comeuppance should they vote for this bill.

This week, House Democrats led the way in helping pass the Orwellian titled “Respect for Marriage Act” (RFMA). It passed with a clear majority of 267 votes for it and 157 against it. What should not escape notice (and what we’ll return to down below) is that 47 Republican members of the House of Representatives voted for it as well.

The bill aims to repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which both the Windsor and Obergefell rulings had already severely gutted. The Respect for Marriage Act comes in response to Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the Dobbs decision that criticized the validity of “substantive due process,” the legal mechanism that progressives have used to discover new rights within the Constitution, of which “same-sex marriage” was one.

While DOMA is technically still a law, progressives fear that the Supreme Court’s conservative majority could potentially overturn Obergefell were it to take Justice Thomas’s arguments seriously. Were the Court to ever overturn Obergefell (which, sadly, almost all recognize as unlikely), same-sex marriage would become a matter for the states, like abortion just has. Supporters of the bill promote it not only as codifying “marriage equality” for federal purposes, but protecting interracial marriage as well.

It should be noted, for argument’s sake, that interracial marriage is not like same-sex marriage in any respects. Interracial marriage possesses the attributes necessary to form a marriage — maleness and femaleness. Same-sex ones do not. Skin color is utterly irrelevant to one’s ability to form a marriage, whereas sex is essential. The difference of the sexes is what gives rise to the need for marriage to begin with: To unite a mother and father’s enfleshed love to the need of their offspring’s security and well-being. So conservatives should brush off hysterics that opposition to the Respect for Marriage Act is akin to wanting interracial marriage banned or voided. That is hogwash. Race is a social construct. Male and female are biological realities, and the relationship of marriage, which requires sexual consummation and therefore involves a sexual complementarity, is not something that can be transformed by mere manipulation of the dictionary definition.

Read here

Read also: The ‘Respect for Marriage Act’ Isn’t about Marriage. It’s about Complying With Woke Ideology. by Jared Eckert, Washington Stand