President Joe Biden signs Respect for Marriage Act into law at the White House

Today, in a cer­e­mo­ny at the White House attend­ed by over five thou­sand peo­ple, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden signed into law H.R. 8404, the Respect for Mar­riage Act, “which estab­lish­es statu­to­ry author­i­ty for same-sex and inter­ra­cial mar­riages and repeals pro­vi­sions of law that once pre­vent­ed any State or ter­ri­to­ry from being required to give effect to a same-sex mar­riage from anoth­er State or territory.”

With the stroke of a pen, the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry “Defense of Mar­riage” Act from the 1990s was final­ly repealed and the right wing Supreme Court put on notice that this coun­try won’t stand for the over­turn­ing the land­mark Oberge­fell decision.

Biden was flanked by Vice Pres­i­dent Kamala Har­ris, Speak­er Nan­cy Pelosi, Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer, First Lady Jill Biden, Sec­ond Gen­tle­man Doug Emhoff, Trans­porta­tion Sec­re­tary Pete Buttigieg, and sev­er­al mem­bers of Con­gress as he signed H.R. 8404. He gave the pen he used to sign the bill — one of sev­er­al cer­e­mo­ni­al pens — to a delight­ed Vice Pres­i­dent Harris.

Watch the bill signing:

The igno­rance of many right wing com­menters was on dis­play on the White House­’s social net­work­ing chan­nels. Randy Haynes, appar­ent­ly unaware that the “Defense of Mar­riage” Act was still on the books (laws struck down as uncon­sti­tu­tion­al don’t mag­i­cal­ly dis­ap­pear of their own accord) whined: “So it was already a law and now it’s a dou­ble law? No, it’s called a diver­sion from real issues this admin­is­tra­tion refus­es to address. Don’t fall for it folks.”

“It has noth­ing to do with respect for mar­riage,” griped Rhon­da Sar­tain.

Actu­al­ly, that is exact­ly what it is about. It’s a very descrip­tive bill title!

Not con­tent with that unimag­i­na­tive retort, Sar­tain went on: “Peo­ple have been able to mar­ry who­ev­er they want­ed for years!!! They tacked on so much non­sense. Going after Chris­tians, church­es, chil­dren, etc. This admin­is­tra­tion and the peo­ple who vot­ed for them are insane­ly cor­rupt and uneducated.”

Exact­ly what “non­sense” has been tacked onto this sim­ple bill? It was so sen­si­ble, in fact, that even Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tives and sen­a­tors vot­ed for it, allow­ing it to clear the U.S. Sen­ate’s ridicu­lous­ly high clo­ture bar.

Musi­cian Cyn­di Lau­per, who per­formed at the bill sign­ing, told the White House press corps that she was hon­ored and delight­ed to be part of the ceremony.

“I just want to tell you, I came here because I want­ed to just say thank you to Pres­i­dent Biden, Speak­er Pelosi, Vice Pres­i­dent Har­ris, and all the advo­cates, and his team.  For — for once, a lot of fam­i­lies — mine and a lot of my friends and peo­ple you know — some­times your neigh­bors — we can rest easy tonight because our fam­i­lies are val­i­dat­ed and because now we’re allowed to love who we love, which sounds odd to say.  But Amer­i­cans can now love who we love.”

“And bless Joe Biden and all the peo­ple that worked on this for allow­ing peo­ple not to wor­ry and their chil­dren not to wor­ry about their future,” Lau­per added.