Monday, May 18, 2009

(PA) The Return of the Marriage Amendment

In all the excitement of moving towards legalization of same-sex marriage, perhaps we've forgotten about the bigger fight to come: the defeat of nearly 30 defense of marriage acts and amendments (and we aren't talking the federal one here). I think we may have even forgotten a little bit that these kind of bills and movements passed no shorter than a year ago in places like Arkansas and, of course, California.

The next one has just been announced... this time in Ohio neighbor, Pennsylvanis. From the Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents (to be blogrolled):

From the Post-Gazette comes word that a Blair County State Senator, John Eichelberger, plans to hold a press conference Tuesday afternoon to announce the introduction of legislation which would amend the Pennsylvania constitution to protect heterosexual marriage from the gay agenda.

The bill needs to be approved in two successive legislative sessions and then put on the ballot as a referendum. Recent similar attempts have been increasingly unsuccessful. While the 2006 legislation was defeated with a tricky "yes means no" maneuver, a 2008 bill never made it out of committee.
The original story can be found at the Post-Gazette.

Pennsylvania only has an act, which can be defeated in a court case or by a simple reversal of the legislative body. Some indications are that this is all about the hot hot hot Senate race that all ready has had Arlen Specter switch parties to (assumedly) avoid a fight with ultra conservative Republican, Pat Toomey. Fortunately, the process to get one passed in that state is quite difficult and may likely die, especially if NY passes marriage and PA sees that it ain't no thang, but we'll see, yes?

*sigh* And here we were all hoping we were done with this crap.

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