Two-thousand religious leaders have signed a letter to the members of the U.S. Senate calling on them to reject a Democrat bill to codify forced recognition of same-sex “marriage” and open the door to federal recognition of polygamy, arguing that the view of marriage as a monogamous, procreative, man-woman union “should not be erased from or punished under our laws.”
HR 8404, the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” (RMA) would repeal the longstanding (but unenforced) Defense of Marriage Act (which recognized marriage as a man-woman union in federal law and protected states’ rights to do the same), federally recognize any “marriage” lawfully performed by any state, and force every state to recognize any “marriage” of any other state “between 2 individuals,” without regard for “the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of those individuals.” States would only have to recognize one another’s same-sex “marriages,” but the federal government would have to recognize any new union a state comes up with, such as a marriage of more than two people.
In July, 47 House Republicans joined every House Democrat in voting to pass it, with the blessing of House Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell declined to stake out a public position on the legislation until Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced a decision on bringing it to the floor of the evenly-divided Senate. Read more…
