WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer teed up a vote to start debate this week on legislation protecting same-sex marriage, after the bill’s sponsors agreed on changes intended to draw enough Republican votes to win passage.
The first procedural vote will be Wednesday on “an extremely important and much-needed bill,” Schumer said Monday on the Senate floor. “No American should ever be discriminated against because of who they love. Passing this bill would secure much-needed safeguards into federal law.”
The legislation — sponsored by Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin as well as Susan Collins, a Maine Republican — would repeal the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. That law defined marriage for federal purposes as between a man and a woman and was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court.
