White Home lights up with rainbow colours after same-sex marriage invoice signing
The Biden administration lit up the south portico of the White Home in rainbow colours on Tuesday night after the president signed the Respect for Marriage Act into legislation earlier within the day.
President Biden signed the laws, which offers federal protections for same-sex marriage, throughout a celebratory occasion on the South Garden with greater than 2,000 attendees.
“The highway for the second has been lengthy, however those that consider in equality and justice, you by no means gave up,” Biden mentioned on the occasion.
The White Home projected the lights in the course of the ceremony however the rainbow colours turned extra sensible because the solar set hours later.
Throughout the Obama administration, the White Home lit up the north facet of the constructing with rainbow colours following the Supreme Courtroom’s landmark Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in 2015 that assured a constitutional proper to same-sex marriage.
The push to move the Respect for Marriage Act, which was finally supported by Democrats in addition to 39 Home Republicans and 12 Senate Republicans, got here in response to Justice Clarence Thomas calling on justices to revisit the Obergefell ruling in a concurring opinion to the excessive court docket’s overturning of abortion protections.
The legislation requires the federal authorities and states to acknowledge legally carried out marriages in different states and repeals the Protection of Marriage Act, a 1996 invoice that acknowledged marriage as “solely a authorized union between one man and one girl as husband and spouse.”
The invoice additionally enshrines protections for interracial marriages.
Throughout Tuesday’s occasion, Biden and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) referred to as on lawmakers to move the Equality Act, which might cement protections in opposition to anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
“When an individual could be married within the morning and thrown out of a restaurant for being homosexual within the afternoon, that is nonetheless mistaken. Incorrect,” Biden mentioned.
