Last week Pennsylvania legislators introduced an amendment to the state constitution to ban gay marriage. Since 1996 there has been a statutory ban in place, but anti-gay advocates have apparently been scared by a Baltimore court’s decision to overturn a Maryland state ban.
The proposed amendment would insert the following into the state constitution:
Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this Commonwealth, and neither the Commonwealth nor any of its political subdivisions shall create or recognize a legal status identical or substantially equivalent to that of marriage for unmarried individuals.
The bill is co-sponsored by some ridiculous number of legislators, including, I’m sorry to say, mine. The Pennsylvania Gay and Lesbian Alliance has an easy way to send a message to your representative.
As every news outlet is saying, this is probably just election year politics that won’t go anywhere. But let’s remind our elected representatives that this kind of play doesn’t fly.
Just wanted to reiterate that the form was very, very, easy.
Done and done.
Cripes almighty…next they’ll be legislating “one man who shall wear a tie on weekdays and drink one martini after coming home from work and one woman who must wear pumps and pearls and push out 2.3 children as conceived via missionary position only.”
Jozet, How ’bout that said children need to be concieved on Wed. evening or Saturday afternoon?
As was mentioned in the post, the proposed amendment seems more like election-year politics than a serious effort at reform. The fact that the language would not even allow for “civil unions” seems like a killer, but who knows? At this point, I believe state lawmakers and officials will attempt to legislate anything at this point, a lot of times for reasons I cannot understand.
For example, a 1982 state law Kansas law makes sexual intercourse with a girl younger than age 16 illegal — regardless of whether the sex is consensual and with another teenager — and the Kansas attorney general in 2003 issued a legal opinion that requires health care workers and counseling professionals to report sexual activity among those girls. A court had issued an injunction against the order, but an appeals court panel lifted the injunction last week. So, now, basically physicians have to act as state agents and report sexual activity among those girls or risk fines and jail time.
Aside from the obvious privacy issues, this likely will prompt some girls not to visit physicians for needed care. It’s one thing for physicians to have to report cases of abuse; it’s quite another to have to report cases of consensual sex with other teens. The lack of logic is almost painful.