U.S. Senate Repeals ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ Supplants it with Misnamed ‘Respect for Marriage Act’

By L.A. Williams
Christian Action League
December 1, 2022

The U.S. Senate on Tuesday voted 61-36 to pass the so-called Respect for Marriage Act, an attempt to codify same-sex marriage into federal law and, in the process, trample religious liberty for those who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. The bill, which would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and require federal and state recognition of any marriage considered legal in the jurisdiction where it took place, now heads back to the House for a final vote and is expected to become law before the end of the year.

Even so, the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League, made it clear that the victory for supporters of same-sex marriage will not last forever.

“Mark my words! Marriage belongs to God and not the so-called rights of any particular group. Same-sex marriage may stand for a while – even a pretty long time – but it cannot stand indefinitely because it contradicts God’s order,” he said in a press release following Tuesday’s vote.

Ron Baity, president of Return America and pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, called the bill’s passage “an all-time low in America.”

“The United States flag should be lowered to half-mast and the nation should be called into a state of mourning for literally challenging the God of the universe. No one has ever won in that war, and neither shall we!” Baity said.

The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission issued an equally passionate statement decrying the Senate’s vote.

“Regardless of how any law, any government institution or our culture treats marriage, Southern Baptists remain anchored in the truth that God has defined marriage as a covenant union between one man and one woman for life,” ERLC Policy Manager Hannah Daniel told Baptist Press. “This purposeful design is for our good and our flourishing.”

“It is disappointing to see a majority of our U.S. senators go away from this reality and fail to amend this bill further to bolster religious liberty protections for people and institutions of faith,” she said.

Creech lamented that the pleadings of conservative evangelicals and the counsel of various religious liberty experts, who warned the Respect for Marriage Act didn’t sufficiently protect religious liberty, were ignored and voted down in amendments.

“This legislation doubles down on the unjust judicial activism of the U.S. Supreme Court, which imposed same-sex marriage in Obergfell v. Hodges,” Creech said, calling out North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis, who helped push the bill through.

Tillis and 11 more Republican senators joined Democrats to pass the bill after rejecting three GOP amendments that would have helped protect those opposing gay marriage based on deeply held religious beliefs. Tillis and fellow Republicans Susan Collins of Maine and Rob Portman of Ohio along with Democrats Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona added an amendment including some religious liberty protections. But the changes fell short.

While the bill, as amended, says that it shall not “be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection” available to a person or organization under the U.S. Constitution or federal law, it also authorizes a private individual, as well as the U.S. attorney general, to “bring a civil action” in federal court against a person believed to have violated the measure. 

Creech described the bill as “full of loopholes that LGBTQ activists will, no doubt, capitalize on to harass, harangue, and legally harry those who disagree with them.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) pushed for more protections as did Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), whose proposed amendment was endorsed by many, including Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse and Greg Baylor with Alliance Defending Freedom.

“Sen. Lee’s amendment would actually accomplish something. It would actually restrain the federal government from taking adverse action against organizations that hold traditional views about marriage,” Baylor told the media. Sen. Lee said as the bill now stands, churches and nonprofits will be subjected to endless litigation.

The Senate rejected amendments by Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Marco Rubio of Florida that would have struck the bill’s authorization of a lawsuit by a private individual.

According to the bill, known as HR 8404, states will have to recognize marriages of any kind established in other states, including those involving children. While it includes the Collins and Baldwin amendment aimed at ensuring that nonprofit religious organizations are not required to provide services to a marriage they oppose, it does not offer explicit protections for business owners to exercise their religious liberty.

In fact, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts has said that the bill will “weaponize the federal government against believers of nearly every major religion.”

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, says that “because the bill removes gender from the gender-based relationship of marriage, it undermines gender altogether and opens the door to yet more child mutilation via ‘transgender’ surgeries — all because a deviant Congress is saying gender does not matter and perversion should be embraced and even celebrated.”

The bill is expected to pass in the House, which earlier this year passed its own version of the act, 267-157, with 47 GOP members joining all Democrats in the vote.

“May God forgive those who worked to make this happen – for they know what they have done. May He show mercy and grace to those who have had the hubris to believe they can defeat His ways,” Creech said. “They have made the critical error of thinking whatever people consider to be a right trumps God’s rights!”

Read the Christian Action League’s full statement on the Senate passage of the “Respect for Marriage Act.”