ACLU

When Kathleen Kane was elected Attorney General here in Pennsylvania, I cheered — we haven’t had a Democratic AG in, well, forever it seems. Surely things would change.

I’m happy to report that they have.

The ACLU recently sued Pennsylvania (and some other states) over the gay marriage ban. Our Attorney General has announced that she will not defend a law she believes is unconstitutional. “If there is a law that I feel that does not conform with the Pennsylvania state constitution and the U.S. Constitution, then I ethically cannot do that as a lawyer,” she said.

It’s not like the law won’t be defended; our conservative governor vows to fight this and he has a legal staff to do so. He’s also, based on current polls, the most unpopular governor in the country, and I can only imagine this will hurt him even more in a state that has a majority of the population supporting gay marriage.

Chances are, nothing will happen here in Pennsylvania since we have a Republican-dominated Supreme Court. (One Republican Justice was recently removed — that happens when you get convicted of a felony — but she was replaced by someone almost as bad). So chances are this will move through the courts and get combined with the cases from the other states to later get before the US Supreme Court.

Still, it’s a step in the right direction, and it’s nice to know we have an Attorney General who has ethics.

During the Bill Clinton campaign, James Carville called Pennsylvania “Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama inbetween.”

Well, it’s changed a bit since that quote was given. The east coast of Pennsylvania (where I live, just a few miles from New Jersey) has become strongly democratic as people from Jersey and New York move away from the city.

Overall, Pennsylvanians always vote for Democrats for President and mostly for Democrats in the state races. In the last election, more people voted for Democrats for the House, but because of gerrymandering, more Republicans got elected.

I bring this up because the ACLU yesterday filed a lawsuit to try to bring Pennsylvania into line with all of the other northeastern states to allow gay marriage. The ACLU acknowledged that it was bringing suit in Pennsylvania because overturning the state’s gay marriage ban in the Republican-controlled legislature is a near-term impossibility. This is despite the fact a recent study found that 54% of Pennsylvania residents are in favor of it.

They are basing this suit primarily on Equal Protection lines apparently (I haven’t read the actual Complaint) and are using Justice Kennedy’s recent opinion in the DOMA cause to argue that discrimination of gay parents harms the children and is thus destructive and so on.

While I would much rather have our elected representatives do the right thing, I don’t expect that to happen any time soon. And while I support this suit, I also don’t expect it to get anywhere with the current Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which has whittled away our basic rights tremendously in the fifteen years or so I’ve lived here.