Editorial: Marital discord / The state's gay marriage ban hits a roadblock
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The drive by a large group of Pennsylvania legislators to make pariahs of gay people who love each other has encountered a problem -- at least in the minds of those who are most zealous about the non-issue of gay marriage.
Although gay marriage is already forbidden by state law with no likelihood of a change in the foreseeable future, the state House this month overwhelmingly supported legislation for a constitutional amendment inviting voters at a future referendum to ban gay marriage and legal unions "identical or substantially equivalent to that of marriage for unmarried individuals."
Those last few words have proved a problem -- although in truth the whole amendment is a problem.
What the sponsors of House Bill 2381 want to do goes further than what President Bush believes is the purpose of the proposed federal marriage amendment. In speaking to supporters of that amendment before the U.S. Senate failed to advance it, Mr. Bush said: "It will leave state legislatures free to make their own choices in defining legal arrangements other than marriage."
Mr. Bush at least seemed open to the possibility that state legislatures might find a middle path, a way to offer gay couples some practical protections in legal arrangements that were not traditional marriage -- and hence could not "threaten" it (for those inclined to believe such nonsense).
No such luck with the Pennsylvania amendment as first proposed. Its extra language was clearly aimed at civil unions, sometimes called domestic partnerships. A concept pioneered in Vermont, civil unions are not recognized in Pennsylvania -- which made the proposed ban on them doubly ridiculous. It was a small consolation that when the bill went to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the language about civil unions was deleted on the way to the amendment winning support.
Yet there is a greater problem with banning civil unions than "fighting hypothetical ghosts" -- as Sen. Jane Earll, a Republican from Erie, put it. If that piece of mischief got enshrined in the state constitution, activist judges of conservative persuasion could use it to ban all sorts of sensible domestic arrangements, not all of them involving gay couples (civil unions also offer advantages to some elderly heterosexual couples who want companionship but not necessarily a traditional marriage).
Such an amendment could form the basis for cruelly denying long-time partners the right to visit their dying mates. It could spell the end of same-sex benefits of the sort that are given at the University of Pittsburgh -- and which in today's world are essential to attracting the best talent. It could leave Pennsylvania less able to compete in the fields of academics and business.
Sarah Springer, a Pittsburgh pediatrician who is medical director of International Adoption Health Services of Western Pennsylvania, pointed out another sort of danger in a Post-Gazette oped piece earlier this month: "When legal recognition of committed couples and families is denied, children lose health insurance, inheritance rights and the rights to have their parents make medical and educational decisions for them."
This whole amendment is objectionable. That the civil union language was in there at the start proves the lie at the heart of its supporters' claims: This isn't about protecting the sanctity of traditional marriage (if it were, it would ban divorce, the real culprit). It is about writing a note of prejudice into the state constitution.
The state Senate should reject this amendment in any form.
First Published June 19, 2006 12:00 am
