PGN heads to the printer each Wednesday, so Tuesdays are usually quite a hectic day for our editorial staff, as we’re scrambling to put final touches on stories, photos, captions and layouts. However, when big stories break, we have to put the brakes on, and this past Tuesday proved to be a big day for LGBT news.
On Tuesday morning, more than two-dozen pro-LGBT Pennsylvania lawmakers — including the state’s two out legislators — gathered to unveil the new bills that will seek to ban LGBT discrimination statewide. HB and SB 300 were rolled out amid record bipartisan support, as well as new polling numbers that found that more than 70 percent of Pennsylvania residents support such efforts. During the nearly hour-long press conference, in which lawmakers talked about their motivations for backing the legislation, a victim of anti-LGBT discrimination told his story and corporate and private partners detailed their companies’ commitments to the LGBT community. It was a milestone moment for the state’s LGBT community.
While that coalition of lawmakers was celebrating the push for equality, elsewhere in Harrisburg, notoriously antigay state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe continued on his long-unsuccessful bid to turn back the clocks on equality in the Keystone State. Metcalfe resubmitted his bill to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, with the lowest number of cosponsors the legislation has ever seen. Metcalfe seemingly doesn’t know when to throw in the towel on a losing battle, declaring that Pennsylvanians need to rally together to protect the God-given tradition of marriage. The fact that Metcalfe quietly introduced his measure on the same day that there was such a robust show of support for LGBT issues in Harrisburg illustrates how out of touch the representative is with the work of his fellow lawmakers, and the intentions of the state’s residents.
If Metcalfe’s misguided action at all dampened the mood of the morning’s press conference, spirits were surely lifted by late afternoon, as the Delaware Senate approved a marriage-equality bill and the state’s governor summarily signed it into law. There are now 11 states that sanction marriage equality, with Rhode Island taking the number-10 spot just last week, just a few months after three states legalized marriage equality by public vote in November.
While Delawareans deservedly celebrated into the night, neighbors in Pennsylvania may have felt a slight pang of jealousy. Every state to our northeast has now legalized marriage equality, while our southern neighbors Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C., are now in the fray. Save Ohio, West Virginia and New Jersey — which offers civil unions — Pennsylvania is literally locked into a sea of pro-marriage states.
But, before the Keystone State can even begin to think about relationship recognition, it needs to adopt HB and SB 300 to provide basic legal protections to its LGBT citizens, which, again, nearly all of our neighboring states have succeeded in doing.
Tuesday was a momentous day for LGBT rights, and it’s well past time for the victories to keep coming, this time in Pennsylvania.