Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Wednesday he is working to build support among Senate Republicans for a bill to recognize same-sex marriage on the federal level, saying he hopes to bring the measure to the floor soon.
“The legislation is so important,” Schumer said, one day after the bill passed the Democrat-controlled House with support from every Democrat and 47 Republicans.
Schumer said Senator Tammy Baldwin (D., Wis.), the sponsor of the Senate companion bill, is talking to Republicans “to see where the support is.” Republican Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Rob Portman of Ohio are co-sponsors.
“I want to bring this bill to the floor, and we’re working to get the necessary Senate Republican support to ensure it would pass,” Schumer said.
The legislation would need the support of all 50 Senate Democrats and ten Senate Republicans to overcome a filibuster.
Portman said there is a “possibility” that ten Senate Republicans could support the bill, citing changing views of same-sex marriage.
“When you look at the House vote and the shifting sentiment about this issue throughout the country, I think this is an issue that many Americans regardless of political affiliation has been resolved and my own personal views on this haven’t changed from several years ago when I said people should have the opportunity to marry who they want,” he said, according to The Hill.
He noted the Senate voted 64-to-32 in 2013 to pass a bill to protect LGBT people from workplace discrimination.
However, several Republican senators have already said they would not support the bill, including Senator Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) who called it a “stupid waste of time.” Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) said he would not support the measure either.
Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah) said the bill “is not something I’ve given consideration to at this stage” because “I don’t see the law changing.”
The House vote comes as Democrats have suggested that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the country, after the Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Court “should reconsider” its decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a right to contraception, privacy in the bedroom, and same-sex marriage, respectively.
Thomas’s reasoning was that the Court’s majority found that a right to abortion was not a form of “liberty” protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. He said the Court therefore had a duty to “correct the error” in the other three precedents, which relied upon the same legal reasoning as Roe. He wrote that after “overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions” protected the rights established in the three cases.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the ruling does not affect issues other than abortion.
The Respect for Marriage Act would formally repeal the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which defines marriage as between a man and woman and was struck down by the 2015 Obergefell ruling.
The new legislation would require the federal government to recognize a marriage if it was valid in the state where it was performed. It would also include legal safeguards for married couples to prevent discrimination and would allow the attorney general to pursue enforcement actions, as well as guarantee that all states recognize public acts, records and judicial proceedings for out-of-state marriages.
In a poll conducted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe last month, YouGov found that 54 percent of Republicans would like to see Obergefell overturned.
However, despite lack of support for Obergefell, which many Republicans believe was wrongly decided, gay marriage is overwhelmingly popular with the American public: A May Gallup poll found that a record-high 71 percent of Americans support gay marriage.