Political fights over the definition of marriage in the United States have raged for decades, so President Joe Biden’s recent signing of the Respect for Marriage Act is unlikely to resolve the matter. That law — passed on a bipartisan basis — requires all states to recognize any legally performed same-sex and interracial marriage.
It’s an imperfect compromise, but it advances personal liberty and echoes broad public sentiment. As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli reported, 94% of Americans support interracial marriage and 71% support same-sex marriage.
Yet he noted that six California Republican representatives voted against the bill, including two from Orange County — Michelle Steel and Young Kim. We shouldn’t be surprised. When the Register interviewed them, they both said that they oppose same-sex marriage but respect the Supreme Court’s rulings.
The new act does not require states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex or interracial couples, but it would protect those marriages that exist if the Supreme Court overturns prior decisions recognizing them. The new law includes a religious freedom amendment that protects religious and nonprofit groups from having to recognize such marriages.
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The impetus for the law came after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas made some controversial comments in his concurring opinion striking down the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion. He suggested the court also revisit its “demonstrably erroneous” reasoning in overturning state contraception, consensual-sex and marriage restrictions.
California is in no danger of rolling back these marriage rights, but it’s not as clear-cut in other, more conservative states. As libertarians, we’ve touted the privatization of marriage — the idea that individuals can create their own marriage contracts, with the state serving mainly to uphold those contracts.
That’s unlikely to happen, but we see the Respect for Marriage Act as getting as close to that notion as possible. We don’t blame Reps. Steel and Kim for voting their conscience, but we agree with Garofoli — that it’s more evidence that “California Republicans simply cannot stop repaving their road to irrelevance.”