Providing for Consideration of H.R. Respect for Marriage Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, obviously, I rise in opposition to the rule. I made my position clear in the Committee on Rules earlier this week, and I think it is very much a position held by a large number of my colleagues.

It is a shame that we are sitting here debating the institution of marriage but without actual debate. We are here, we are going to debate this rule, it will be a few minutes, and then boom, we are going to go vote. We are not going to have any real debate on this tomorrow either.

I offered an amendment in the Committee on Rules, an amendment to add protections for religious liberty, and it was killed on a budget point of order, a budget point of order that it said would cost around $500,000 or more. For what? For damages that an individual American might receive if successful in challenging the Department of Justice if their rights were being infringed.

Let me be clear. It was going to be killed on a point of order out of the Committee on Rules because it could be successful in protecting the rights of Americans, when you have got a piece of legislation that has a private right of action put into it, a sword to be used against the American people if they exercise their closely held religious beliefs. And that is the truth.

It is a bill that was passed off of this floor with no hearing in the House Committee on the Judiciary, sent to the Senate in July, with no protection for religious liberty in it, and then provisions were added in the Senate to provide some very bare minimum, narrow religious liberty protections, only for the solemnization of marriage.

When an individual tries to offer an amendment to try to protect the rights of all Americans to be free from persecution--if, for example, you are a school, a religious school, that might not want to hire somebody in a same-sex marriage because it is against your closely held religious beliefs, you might have to litigate that now. The response by the other side is: Oh, my gosh, the Constitution exists; oh, my gosh, RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, exists.

So the shield that people had before is now the thing that you have to go litigate in court and hire lawyers to defend yourself for exercising your closely held religious beliefs against the sword that this legislation provides. That is the truth of what we are dealing with here.

We offered an amendment in good faith, just like Senator Mike Lee did, a bipartisan amendment, by the way. We are getting no debate, no ability to offer that amendment on the floor, no ability to have a debate on that amendment, no ability to actually have a conversation about the free exercise of religion and protecting people's closely held religious beliefs.

That is why people are sick of this institution. We do not debate. We do not amend. We simply jam stuff through the Committee on Rules and then we walk away and go give speeches on the steps. That is no way to do business. I hope we change that in the new Congress. But this is not the way to do business in the House of Representatives.

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