Biden to sign into law the same sex marriage bill
“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden has said in 2012 as Vice President of United States, declaring his support for the same sex marriage for first time. Fast forward a decade later, Joe Biden as President of the US is all set to sign into law the same sex marriage bill.
The bill supporting the same sex marriage in US was passed last week in Congress that will mandate a federal recognition for all inter-racial and same sex marriages in the country. The bill was passed in the House with 39 Republicans joining Democrats supporting the bill, after it was passed in the Senate with support of 12 Republican senators. And the White House is turning this landmark bill signing on Tuesday by President Biden into a high scale event celebrating Biden administration’s big step to provide right to marry for all.
Among the guests invited to the bill signing at the White House are prominent members of the LGBTQ community and activists, as mentioned by CNN. They include, according to a White House official, Judy Kasen-Windsor, widow of gay rights activist Edie Windsor; Matthew Haynes, co-owner of Club Q, the LGBTQ club in Colorado Springs where a gunman last month killed five people in a mass shooting; Club Q shooting survivors James Slaugh and Michael Anderson; and a number of plaintiffs from cases that culminated in the landmark civil rights case Obergefell vs. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that same-sex couples can marry nationwide.
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“That single interview was a transformative moment in Biden’s development as a politician. In the Senate, as a presidential candidate and as vice president, he always had been very cautious around LGBT issues, afraid of taking any position that opponents could use to portray him as a left-winger,” Sasha Issenberg, author of “The Engagement: America’s Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage,” told CNN, as she referred about the 2012 interview of Biden on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’.
“But the reception to what he said on ‘Meet the Press’ was universal praise within his party, especially from LGBT advocates and donors who had previously been skeptical of him.”
“[Biden] has demonstrated his support for decades for lesbian and gay civil rights, and Tuesday’s signing into law is a reaffirmation of that during this time when rights are under assault,” Philanthropist and Democratic donor David Bohnett said. “I think we’re here in response to the hateful and discriminatory actions and tactics by so many in the right-wing and so many that want to dismantle the rights that we fought so hard for a long time.” Bohnett has been an outspoken gay and transgender rights activist and a big supporter of Biden.
