Chuck Schumer Fears for Queer Daughter's Marriage After RBG's Death

From left: Alison Schumer, Elizabeth Weiland, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has expressed grave concern over the future of his daughter Alison Schumer's marriage to Elizabeth Weiland considering the shortlist of anti-LGBTQ+ Supreme Court nominees Donald Trump is considering to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The New York senator was celebrating Rosh Hashanah with his family when they heard the news of Ginsburg's death, according to the New York Daily News.

His daughter and daughter-in-law, who wed in 2018, were immediately concerned for their future as a married couple. "They asked, 'Could their right to marry be undone?'" Schumer said in a Senate speech.

While the country mourned Ginsburg, a champion of equality and civil rights, Democrats and Republicans alike praised her. But in his speech, Schumer had his eye on the bigger picture.

"The kind words and lamentations are totally meaningless if he moves to tear down everything Justice Ginsburg built," Schumer said of Republican Senate Majority Mitch McConnell.

Although McConnell refused to hold a vote on President Barack Obama's pick Merrick Garland nearly a year before the 2016 presidential election, he and the Trump administration are planning to push through a conservative nominee with just over a month to go before this year's election.

Most of the people on the shortlist of Trump's SCOTUS picks have stark histories of being anti-LGBTQ+. The front-runner, Amy Coney Barrett, has been deemed an "absolute threat" to LGBTQ+ rights by the Human Rights Campaign.

"Amy Coney Barrett's history tells a story of anti-LGBTQ ideology, opposing basic rights thought to be settled law, and an anti-choice ideology out of step with popular opinion," according to an HRC press release issued Tuesday.