A bill that would amend the state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage is in a deep coma and is probably dead, at least for the rest of this session.
Faced with staunch opposition to the measure in the Democrat-controlled House, the main sponsor, Sen. Michael Brubaker, R-Lancaster, asked the Senate last evening to table the bill indefinitely, and it agreed.
That almost certainly means it won't be acted on in the 2007-08 session, which ends Nov. 30. Mr. Brubaker said he's not giving up on the bill, though he didn't say when he might push for it again.
The bill would have amended the constitution to define a legal marriage in Pennsylvania as a union only of one man and one woman. Pennsylvania already has a law doing that, the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, but some religious groups and social conservatives want to put the one man-one woman definition into the constitution, to make it stronger and prevent "liberal judges" from allowing gays or lesbians to try to get married or to join in "civil unions," as they can in several other states.
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He said the bill isn't bigoted, as some critics have charged.
"Marriage between one man and one woman is what we've had for the history of our commonwealth," he said.
The history of Pennsylvania started in 1996 with the Defense of Marriage Act? That can't be right.... Well, maybe their law said one man & one woman before that, and the article just didn't think it worth mentioning.
But anyways. While Pennsylvania won't be enshrining bigotry against gays into its constitution right now, Michigan's courts have decided that its anti-gay amendment precludes giving partnership benefits to same-sex couples, despite the fact that the people pressing for the amendment promised that it wouldn't. But, hell, they were almost certainly lying, because it's not about marriage, it's about hurting gay people and their children.
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