It’s about damn time! The full force of the United States government will soon declare what we all know to be true: Love Is Love.
Zioness is guided by the Jewish notion of b’tzelem Elohim—that all humanity was created in G-d’s image. We stand to protect and value the humanity of each being. That means that every person, every soul, is a creature of G-d and deserves basic human rights and protections regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, race, or ethnicity.
Today, for just a moment, America is trending in the same direction.
Decades of work have gone toward this momentous bipartisan effort of the United States Congress to codify same-sex and interracial marriage. Thank you Congress, and thank you President Biden.
The Respect for Marriage Act secures federal rights and benefits to *all* married couples, regadless of race or sexual orientation, and bars any state from denying “full faith and credit” to an out-of-state marriage based on sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin. These protections include more than 1,100 federal rights, benefits, and obligations of marriage in the federal code––things like health insurance, tax benefits, social security, and veteran home loans.
This summer, we were viscerally and painfully reminded that the Supreme Court is willing to overturn settled precedent and rescind rights previously deemed constitutionally protected––rights which Americans have relied on to make choices about their lives and their futures. Given the pernicious commentary in Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs, there was reason to believe the Court might come next for interracial and gay marriage by reconsidering the groundbreaking precedents set in Obergefell and Loving. Now, Americans are safe to love whomever they love without facing state sanctioned bigotry in their marriage.
The path toward full LGBTQIA+ liberation has and will continue to be met with challenges. The same goes for the path toward racial justice and equality in America.
But today is a victory. A victory for the millions of Americans and their loved ones who can finally be certain they are afforded equal opportunities under the law to marry who they love, and to be treated equally because of that marriage.