Dear Gov. Corbett,
In deference to your analogy last October, my sister has agreed to marry me next month with the full knowledge that I will in turn marry my niece in May. Each of these events will fall well within the law, though their descriptions are purposely misleading to reflect your comment equating incest to gay marriage.
You see, I will conduct the ceremony for the marriage of my niece and my future nephew-in-law in Vermont. My sister will conduct the ceremony for my partner and me in Delaware. We will hold our reception in Philadelphia where we live.
Both my niece and I can be legally wed in Vermont to our prospective partners, but only she can be in Pennsylvania. She was 12 when I met my partner 15 years ago, and has known him as her uncle all this time. Upon buying a house together then, I have considered us uncommon-outlaw married. What’s more absurd than that term is that reality. In case you haven’t kept tabs, Pennsylvania is the only Northeastern state without gay marriage. Even Virginia and Kentucky have struck down bans on gay marriage. Kentucky! Kind of takes the punch out of referring to my home state as Pennsyltucky.
Your shift in support of banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment, housing and public accommodations demonstrates a compassion that should logically extend toward marriage. My niece will not suddenly dismiss her boyfriend and marry a woman in Vermont as a result of my ability to marry my same-sex partner. Her twin brother is gay and cannot marry a man of his choosing. How are these twins not equal under the law?
I would very much like to be married in the state in which I was born and have lived my whole life, nearly half a century. Won’t you please come down on the right side of history before March 15, and let me be wed here in the City of Brotherly Love? Thank you and best regards, Brian J. Cahill
Brian Cahill is the Premium Finance Manager for Aon Risk Solutions’ Northeast region.