On Tuesday, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that would make same-sex marriage recognition mandatory at the federal level: the text passed 267 in favor and 157 against, but it still has to pass the Senate to become law. The proposal was made to protect same-sex marriages if the increasingly conservative and reactionary US Supreme Court decides to overturn existing protections, as it recently did with abortion rights.
In the United States, same-sex marriages had also been legalized at the federal level by a Supreme Court ruling: the Obergefell v. Hodges of 2015. If the court decides to overturn it, as it did with abortion rights, each individual US state could choose to adopt the legislation it prefers, without further federal restrictions. As things stand, this would lead to a ban on same-sex marriages in around 30 states. However, federal law would continue to guarantee the validity of same-sex marriages in all states.
The bill, called the Respect for Marriage Act, would permanently repeal a 1996 law that defined marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman, as well as introduce a range of other protections. In the House of Representatives, the proposal also passed thanks to the support of 47 Republican lawmakers, although more than three-quarters of the party opposed it. The text must now be voted on in the Senate, which by no means means approval: the Democrats do not have a majority there and it needs the support of at least 10 Republicans to pass the law.