The House passed the Marriage Protection Act on July 22, 233 to 194. Seventeen Republicans, including the normally conservative Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R.-Fla.), voted against the bill, while 27 Democrats voted for it.
An alternative to the much-harder-to-pass Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), the Marriage Protection Act (HR 3313) would, as the Constitution allows, remove from the jurisdiction of federal courts all legal challenges to it and the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which preserves states from having to recognize same-sex "marriages" performed in other states. "Throughout history, the union of one man and one woman has been the bedrock of civilization. We must act now to prevent an activist judiciary from further weakening that foundation in our own nation," said Rep. Todd Akin (R.-Mo.).
