and government officers and employees who object to participating or issuing marriage licenses based on their "deeply held beliefs about marriage, family, and sexuality". On March 12, 2015, the Utah State Senate passed the bill 25–3 with 1 abstention. Governor Gary Herbert signed the bill into law on March 20, and it went into effect on May 12, 2015. A bill to amend Utah's marriage statutes was introduced by Representative Kraig Powell on February 5, 2016. The bill sought to make all mentions to marriage in Utah law gender-neutral, with the term "husband and wife" changed to "spouses" or "married couple". It would have also removed the statutory same-sex marriage ban enacted in 1977. The bill was assigned to the House Rules Committee on February 8; however, it was not heard in committee and died at the end of the 2016 general session on March 10. A bill to update Utah's adoption laws by replacing "mother and father" with "parents" was introduced to the Senate on February 18, 2016, but it also failed to pass before March 10. On March 10, 2016, Senator Jim Dabakis successfully delayed a vote on an anti-gay bill that sought to change the definition of joint tenants from "any legally married couple" to "husband and wife". The bill would have prevented same-sex couples from being legitimate joint tenants under Utah law. The bill had been approved in the House earlier in March and its final reading in the Senate was scheduled for March 10, the last day of the 2016 general session. Dabakis delayed the final reading of the bill for several minutes before midnight by sneezing and coughing. As the bill failed to pass before midnight March 10, it died, and no similar bill was brought up in successive legislative sessions. All four Utah representatives in the U.S. House, Republicans Blake Moore, Chris Stewart, John Curtis and Burgess Owens, voted in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act in July 2022. The Act would officially repeal DOMA and require the federal government to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages, codifying parts of both the Obergefell v. Hodges and Loving v. Virginia rulings. Curtis said, "I understand how important codifying these protections are to many Utahns. I do not believe the federal government should infringe upon an individual's decision about who they wish to marry." LGBT advocates praised the representatives for their votes. The Act was