By Isolde Raftery, Staff Writer, NBC News
Rhode Island moved one step closer to approving same-sex marriage on Tuesday when the House Judiciary Committee unanimously agreed to send a marriage equality bill to the full House.?
The bill revises current marriage law ? including language that prohibits a man from marrying his mother, grandmother, stepmother and so on. The bill renders those relations gender-neutral: ?No person shall marry his or her sibling, parent, grandparent, child?"
U.S. Rep. David Cicilline, an openly-gay Democrat, applauded his home state on Tuesday. On his official website and on his Facebook page, he issued a statement: ?This important effort has received the support of a growing number of Rhode Islanders from nearly every political background and religious tradition, and I believe it is time our state recognizes the dignity and value of relationships between committed and loving individuals of the same gender by enacting full marriage equality in Rhode Island.?
If passed by House and Senate, gay couples could start getting married on Jan. 1, 2014. The Providence Journal reported that supporters expect the measure to pass the state House, but that the state Senate is less certain.?
Even if the bill passes, Rhode Island may be preempted by the U.S. Supreme Court, which received its first brief on same-sex marriage on Tuesday. The brief, which came from supporters of a 2008 California ban on same-sex marriage, urged the justices to let voters define marriage.
A separate filing from ?the top three Republican members of the House of Representatives - Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy - urged the court to uphold Section 3 of a 1996 federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, that has the effect of denying same-sex couples a variety of federal benefits that heterosexual couples receive.
For now, though, nine states and Washington, D.C. allow same-sex marriage. Voters in Washington, Maryland and Maine approved same-sex marriage during the November election. Minnesota voters refused an amendment that would have written man-woman marriage into the state constitution.?
Reuters contributed reporting.
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