GOP didn’t unite to ban gay marriage like it united on abortion – The Boston Globe

November 3, 2022 Kim Martel

This election season has been about two things: inflation and abortion. What it has not been about is gay marriage. But it could have been. Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, 17 states have enacted abortion bans. Another 11 Republican-led states are expected to follow suit. Gay marriage, on the other hand, is legal in all states but was also mentioned in the Dobbs case as not necessarily a guaranteed right in Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion.

Yet the GOP didn’t unite to ban gay marriage like it united on abortion. In fact, it did the opposite. Right before Congress broke for August recess, many Republicans joined forces with Democrats to pass the Respect for Marriage Act. In the House, 47 Republicans crossed the aisle to protect same-sex marriage in all states. In the Senate, 10 Republicans would have needed to vote with the Democrats to break the filibuster threshold. Five Republican senators agreed to support it. It remains unclear whether it will eventually pass, but it might since it will help some more moderate Republicans keep suburban white women voting for them. And the legislation is backed by more than 400 current and former Republican officials, including Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker and Trump adviser David Urban.

If it passes, we’ll pop the champagne and go on believing that true love conquers all. But then we need to figure out why there is bipartisan support for gay marriage but not abortion rights.

GOP support for gay marriage is not because it is more popular than abortion rights. Both abortion and gay marriage are popular with the American people. About 85 percent of Americans support the right to an abortion in some or all circumstances and a majority of Americans have supported abortion for at least 50 years. The majority of Americans also support gay marriage; support for gay marriage went from 44 percent in 2010 to 62 percent today.

How did the same Congress that could not pass legislation to protect Roe or even the right to contraception this summer manage to create a bipartisan movement for gay marriage? Although House Democrats passed the Women’s Health Protection Act to safeguard the right to abortion, it was quickly shot down in the Senate where every Republican senator and Democrat Joe Manchin stood in opposition. The Right to Contraception Act, also passed in the House, never even made it to the Senate thanks to Republican Senator Joni Ernst.

So what makes gay marriage a bipartisan issue? Most Americans are unmarried, but those who are married are wealthier and better educated. Married people are also much more likely to be white — 57 percent of white people are married vs. 33 percent of Black people.

Alternatively, abortion rights primarily benefit non-white and poor women. Three-quarters of women who get abortions have an annual income below $27,000. Only 10 percent of people who get abortions are white. Only 14 percent are married. In other words, there’s a pretty small overlap between people who need marriage rights and people who need abortion care. And needless to say, cisgendered men (gay and straight) can get married but don’t need abortions.

So by voting to protect gay marriage and not abortion, Republicans in Congress are protecting the whitest, wealthiest, and most privileged among us while oppressing the most marginalized. Though this makes some electoral sense since Republican voters are whiter and wealthier than Democrats or independents, if there is anything that the Kansas referendum in support of abortion rights has taught us, it’s that Republicans ignore the popularity of abortion rights at their own peril.

It’s painfully clear that marriage and abortion rights benefit widely different demographics. It’s great to get all the federal rights and privileges associated with marriage, but being denied a marriage certificate will not result in countless deaths. Denying women and pregnant people access to abortion will.

Elissa Asch is a senior at Middlebury College and a reproductive rights activist. Laurie Essig is a professor and director of Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Middlebury College and author of “Love, Inc.: Dating Apps, the Big White Wedding, and Chasing the Happily Neverafter.”