The Home of Representatives handed the Respect for Marriage Act, 258-169, on Thursday and it now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk. The measure, which seeks to codify the legalization of same-sex marriage into federal legislation, has come underneath assault from Republican lawmakers who see it as a menace to spiritual liberty.
“It’s an absolute abomination with respect to… non secular liberty,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, informed reporters after a press convention on his Texas border plan this Thursday. “It’s purposefully undermining non secular liberty.”
Roy launched an modification within the Home which might have supplied non secular liberty protections for individuals who see marriage as a union between one man and one lady. The modification failed after Home Guidelines Committee Chairman Rep. James McGovern, D-Mass., blocked Roy’s modification from shifting to the Home ground in a Monday hearing. McGovern didn’t reply to The Day by day Sign’s request for remark.
In separate feedback to The Day by day Sign, Roy expounded on the invoice’s threats to spiritual freedom.
“Immediately, Congress handed a legislation that violates the very core of the First Modification, the Structure, and the rights we maintain expensive as People,” he stated. “The so-called Respect for Marriage Act will lead to predatory, activist lawsuits towards good folks of religion for merely residing out their lives according to their beliefs.”
“The anemic non secular liberty protections within the Respect for Marriage could be laughable if the stakes weren’t so excessive,” he added. “In good religion, I supplied a standard sense resolution, equivalent to the bipartisan modification supplied by Senator Mike Lee. It could have prohibited the federal authorities from discriminating towards People based mostly on their views on marriage, however Democrats on the Home Guidelines Committee blocked it.”
Roy framed the invoice’s passage as “one other instance of how Congress is damaged.”
“Earlier than the Guidelines Committee listening to on Tuesday, not a single committee held a listening to, heard from witnesses, or deliberated the small print of this laws,” he stated. “Till we basically change how we do enterprise right here, we’ll proceed to fail the American folks.”
“I supplied an modification,” Roy informed reporters Thursday. “They shut it down on a technicality underneath a funds level of order.”
The Senate handed the Respect for Marriage Act, 61-36, final week. Twelve Republicans voted for the invoice. The Senate handed the invoice with out the non secular liberty modification proposed by Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, although proponents of the invoice added protections for “non secular service and solemnization of marriage.”
However there’s “no indication” this non secular liberty provision would defend folks of religion, Roy stated Thursday.
“The 12 Senate Republicans who voted for it within the Senate are both silly or deceitful as a result of you may’t presumably inform me that that’s truly going to guard non secular liberty,” Roy stated.
Home Republican Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., informed The Day by day Sign on Thursday:
Underneath full Democrat occasion rule, now we have seen too many People have their non secular freedoms trampled upon, and the dearth of non secular liberty protections on this invoice will open People of religion as much as assaults by unelected bureaucrats in Washington. As we transfer into the bulk subsequent yr, Home Republicans are dedicated to defending non secular freedoms as a prime precedence of the brand new Congress.
“Individuals can have disagreements on that, however that’s not a safety of your, of your non secular liberty, culturally held non secular beliefs,” Rep. Roy of Texas stated. “It’s an abomination.”
Editor’s Word: This story has been up to date with an extra remark from Chip Roy.
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