Gee, thanks for this tiny step to protect my same-sex marriage

As an out gay man in an interracial, same-sex marriage, I’m pleased the Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which will protect my five-year-old union and ensure that bigots can’t invalidate my swirl of a marriage. I’m happy it will sail to passage once more in the House and that President Biden will sign it into law. And yet …

Look, as an institutionalist who recognizes the power of incrementalism in the slow but steady march to equality, I’m used to seeing the forest for the trees. In that regard, the legislation’s repeal of the remaining section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act — which defined marriage as one man, one woman — is an advancement. But the more I focus on the trees that make up this act, the more my joy diminishes.

Remember, the Respect for Marriage Act is meant to safeguard against the view expressed by Justice Clarence Thomas that the Supreme Court “should reconsider” Obergefell, its 2015 ruling that guaranteed a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Writing in the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade’s constitutional right to an abortion, Thomas went on to say that the precedent’s foundation of due process “is ‘demonstrably erroneous’ ” and that “we have a duty to ‘correct the error.’ ”