The Solid Northeast

You know, K and I aren’t really “pride people.” We’re just not that kind of gay. You won’t find us carrying the sea-to-sea Key West pride flag, or attending the Philly Pride parade, or dancing on a float, or anything like that. We’re totally proud of who we are, and we’re glad that we were “born this way” and quite content with it all, but pride just isn’t our thing. On days like this, though, there is a great deal of pride to be had and plenty of reason to celebrate.

After the anti-DOMA ruling was issued by the Supreme Court last year, gay rights advocates in Pennsylvania immediately went to work. In less than a year since that ruling, no fewer than seven lawsuits have been launched against the state at various levels, for various reasons, contesting some or all of various anti-gay laws. So far, all but one of those is pending. Today, Whitewood v. Wolf, a case lodged in federal court that sought regonition of out-of-state gay marriages and marriage equality for Pennsylvania’s LGBT community, was decided.

The judge, who notably was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2002 and recommended by our then-Republican senator (who we later voted out by a record-setting margin just four years later), sided with the gay community and stood for equality. In his ruling, Judge John Jones III writes:

Some of our citizens are made deeply uncomfortable by the notion of same-sex marriage. However, that same-sex marriage causes discomfort in some does not make its prohibition constitutional. […] Nor can past tradition trump the bedrock constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. Were that not so, ours would still be a racially segregated nation according to the now rightfully discarded doctrine of ‘separate but equal.’

In future generations the label ‘same-sex marriage’ will be abandoned, to be replaced simply by ‘marriage.’ We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history.

Clearly, I could not agree more. It’s slightly less embarrassing to live in Pennsylvania today, which has long been more progressive than this law would indicate. There’s always a chance of appeal, but I hope that calmer, more rational, more egalitarian heads will prevail. I await eagerly the day that K and I’s marriage license, which will be obtained from neighboring New Jersey in 2016, is fully and equally recognized under the law in Pennsylvania. I imagine — parade or not — that there will be no bigger feeling of (gay) pride than that.

UPDATE: Governor Corbett has declined to petition for a stay or appeal of the ruling, making Pennsylvania officially the 19th state in the USA with marriage equality. This, in turn, creates a “solid northeast” where no state in the region outlaws same-sex marriage — just ten years after Massachusetts led the nation and become the first state to permit it. Incredible.


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