Tinder Announces Respect For Marriage Initiative
Tinder and the Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBTQ+ right group, have announced the launch of an initiative urging the Senate to pass the Respect for Marriage Act.
“As a company who has created more than 75 billion matches around the world, including helping millions of LGBTQIA+ people of diverse backgrounds find their partners, we consider passage of this legislation to be imperative, and strongly support its quick passage,” reads a news release from Tinder and its parent company Match Group.
The announcement showed that an ad campaign on Tinder will spotlight LGBTQ+ couples who met on the app and direct users to a landing page with an email template they can send across to their senators that encourages them to vote in favour of the bill.
The Senate is due to vote on the bill in the upcoming weeks but it is unclear as to whether it has enough support in order to advance.
President Biden has said he will sign the legislation into law if it passes the Senate.
The Respect for Marriage Act was introduced in July after an opinion by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas suggesting the Court revisit its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges. It will address a national patchwork of marriage laws by requiring states to legally recognize same-sex and interracial marriages if those unions are valid in the states in which they were performed.
More than 30 states still have statutes or constitutional amendments that prohibit same-sex marriages.
The Respect for Marriage Act would also officially repeal the Defence of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman.