The Return of the Marriage Amendment

by Michael Jones · 2009-05-18 18:50:00 UTC
Topics:

Marriage Amendment

It's been since 2008 since we've last seen a statewide amendment to ban same-sex marriage.  And as best I can tell, here's the first one of 2009.  The unfortunate state?

Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents (PLC) breaks it down:

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.

Alright.  So it looks like this thing stands a small chance of even getting through the state legislature.  But as PLC points out, fighting back a marriage amendment draws serious resources away from other LGBT rights battles in Pennsylvania, like efforts to expand hate crimes protections in the state, or expanding the state's anti-discrimination laws to include sexual orientation and gender identity.  So this could be a really wily move by anti-LGBT lawmakers.

Of course, should this amendment see the light of day, it would likely be put on the ballot in 2010, where Pennsylvania will see an open governor's race, as well as the race between newly-minted Democrat Arlen Specter and Republican wingnut Pat Toomey.  All of that combined could make for some fireworks, and we don't mean in a good way.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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