'Respect for Marriage Act' Could Have Dire Consequences for Defenders of Traditional Marriage

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

49% : The U.S. bishops and religious-freedom groups are warning that the recent passage of the "Respect for Marriage Act," purportedly aimed merely to uphold the protections afforded to same-sex couples in the Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, in fact opens up new legal avenues for targeting people of faith and others who dissent on the issue.
49% :Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation, told the Register that the private right of action in the measure means that any individual who thinks they've been discriminated against on the question of same-sex civil marriage can file suit in federal court.
48% :Sharp outlined two major concerns that Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal group that focuses on religious liberty, has with the measure.
46% : Douglas Laycock, a professor of law and religious studies at the University of Virginia, wrote in Commonweal that he believes the bill "provides that religious resistance to federal recognition of same-sex marriage shall not result in any lawsuit or any loss of government benefits or privileges."
46% :Dan Balserak, religious liberty director and assistant counsel at the USCCB, told the Register that the bishops' principal concern with the act is that "it denies the truth of marriage, which is the Church's long-standing belief and teaching that marriage is the union of one man and one woman," and in addition, there are "serious concerns with the act's impact on religious liberty."
45% : WASHINGTON -- A newly enacted law to codify same-sex civil marriage may have just given the government and activist groups new ammunition against those who adhere to the long-standing view that marriage is between one man and one woman.
45% : For example, while the bill's language specifies that nothing in the bill itself would be construed to deny tax-exempt status, he said that "nothing stops the IRS from looking at this bill as evidence" from Congress that "national public policy is to require same-sex marriage," since part of the IRS' determination of whether a nonprofit gets tax-exempt status is whether the organization is acting in a way that's "contrary to public policy."
44% : He said its equating of opposition to same-sex civil marriage to opposition to interracial marriage "empowers the IRS to take away the tax-exempt status for religious institutions who stand for one man, one woman marriage" in the future.
44% : He believed the bill's authors "wanted to add interracial marriage precisely to make the parallel" so that "the IRS can point to that and say this is now national policy; people who oppose same-sex marriage are equivalent to racist bigots."
42% : Requiring all states to recognize same-sex civil marriages performed out of state, it formally repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that defined marriage as between one man and one woman.
40% : The Supreme Court's 2015 Obergefell decision currently requires all states to allow same-sex civil marriage, but the legislation was proposed following concerns that Obergefell might be overturned.
37% :New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, chairman of the U.S. bishops' religious liberty committee, said the supposed protections failed to resolve "the main problem" with the bill, which is that "in any context in which conflicts between religious beliefs and same-sex civil marriage arise, the Act will be used as evidence that religious believers must surrender to the state's interest in recognizing same-sex civil marriages.
34% : During the Senate debate on the bill, Lee referenced a concession from then-U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli during the oral argument in Obergefell that the potential removal of the tax-exempt status of groups dissenting from a belief in same-sex marriage was "going to be an issue."
33% :Sharp added that the measure is "unnecessary," in terms of protecting same-sex civil marriage, because the bill "provides no protection, no benefit to same-sex couples that they don't already have under the law."
30% : However, many observers argued that these concerns were unfounded, as Justice Samuel Alito stated in the Dobbs majority opinion that the decision "concerns the right to abortion and no other right."

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