Pete Buttigieg told Marco Rubio why the Respect for Marriage Act isn't a 'stupid waste of time'
“If Rubio’s got time to fight against Disney, I don’t know why he wouldn’t have time to help safeguard marriages like mine."
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, eliminating federal abortion protections, Democrats are scrambling to protect same-sex marriage from being reversed as well.
Supporters of same-sex marriage are concerned after Justice Clarence Thomas called for other rulings to be revisited in the wake of the Roe decision. "In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell," Thomas wrote, referring to decisions on contraception, sodomy and same-sex marriage.
To ensure that same-sex marriage won’t be overturned by the aggressive court, the House of Representatives passed the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA) bill last week. It won by a 267-157 vote, with 47 Republicans joining a unanimous Democratic caucus in supporting the legislation.
Now, the bill has to be approved by the Senate where Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hopes to get 10 Republicans to support the bill to overcome the Senate's 60-vote filibuster hurdle.
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio called the bill a “stupid waste of time” after being approached by a reporter at the Capitol building on Wednesday, July 20. Rubio says he wouldn’t participate in a vote when it comes to the Senate, saying that it’s a “fake problem.”
Rubio clearly hasn’t considered the fact that the United States has 980,000 same-sex households, of which 58% are married. Repealing same-sex marriage would severely impact the rights of hundreds of thousands of American families.
Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg pushed back against Rubio’s suggestion that it was a waste of time by explaining how important the issue is to his family. He also made note of the fact that Rubio was part of Florida’s Republican Party’s petty culture-war-driven fight against Disney.
\u201cDisney doesn\u2019t say a word about the dictatorship in #China because it would cost them billions of $\u2019s \n\nBut they have no problem using their corporate power to lie about laws passed by democratically elected legislators in #Florida \n\nhttps://t.co/aURQrl9mQ9\u201d— Marco Rubio (@Marco Rubio) 1650508695
If the thought of someone mentioning the word gay in a public school setting is a threat to Rubio then surely considering the legality of same-sex marriage is far from a waste of his time.
“If [Rubio’s] got time to fight against Disney, I don’t know why he wouldn’t have time to help safeguard marriages like mine. Look, this is really, really important to a lot of people. It’s certainly important to me,” Buttigieg said on CNN’s State of the Union this weekend.
\u201cTapper: Rubio called the bill a stupid waste of time\nButtigieg: If he has time to fight against Disney, I don\u2019t know why he wouldn\u2019t have time to safeguard marriages like mine\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1658670828
Rubio has also recently got really worked up about UFOs.
\u201c"I want us to take it seriously." \u2014\u00a0Marco Rubio, on UFO research\n\n"A stupid waste of time." \u2014\u00a0Marco Rubio, on protecting interracial and gay marriage rights\u201d— Timothy Burke (@Timothy Burke) 1658348179
As the first openly gay person confirmed to a U.S. cabinet position who is married and has two children, Buttigieg is in a unique position to point out how out of step Rubio is with reality. Buttigieg went on to explain why the legislation was on his mind as he fed his twin babies breakfast over the weekend.
\u201cButtigieg: I don\u2019t understand how such a majority of House Republicans voted no after I was in a room with a lot of them\u2026 having perfectly normal conversations with many of them only for them to go around the corner and say that my marriage doesn\u2019t deserve to continue\u201d— Acyn (@Acyn) 1658671122
“That half-hour of my morning had me thinking about how much I depend on and count on my spouse every day, and our marriage deserves to be treated equally,” he said. “I don't know why this would be hard,” he added.
“I just don’t understand how such a majority of House Republicans voted ‘no’ on our marriage as recently as Tuesday,” he continued.
\u201cWorking Americans,of every background,struggle with real problems like gas prices & flight cancellations\n\nBut we have a Transportation Secretary who wants us to focus on a fake problem & who went to Harvard but apparently doesn\u2019t know the difference between state & federal issues\u201d— Marco Rubio (@Marco Rubio) 1658705191
Rubio responded to Buttigieg on Twitter.
“I’m gonna focus on the real problems,” Rubio said. “I’m not gonna focus on the agenda dictated by a bunch of affluent elite liberals and a bunch of Marxist misfits who sadly today control the agenda of the modern Democratic Party.”
Rubio is wildly out of touch with that statement as well. Buttigieg isn’t parroting the agenda of some elitist class, but the average, everyday American. Polls show that 71% of Americans support same-sex marriage, so it’s Congress’s job to step up and protect a cornerstone of the American family from being overturned by an activist court.
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