Just hours after a similar decision in Oregon yesterday, Pennsylvania now becomes the 19th state where the Constitutionally conservative value of equal protection for all under the law becomes the law of the land again.
The Keystone State’s ban on marriage equality has just been found by a federal judge to be in violation of the U.S. Constitution there. Wildly unpopular Republican Gov. Tom Corbett — who lost today on this issue, as well as in his recent failed defense of Republican polling place Photo ID restrictions — is believed likely to appeal the decision. (He recently chose not to appeal the indefensible polling place restrictions which, as the state was forced to admit before the trial even began, had nothing to do with stopping “voter fraud”.)
Corbett, a self-proclaimed “conservative”, hired a private $400/hour firm to defend the law after Democratic state Attorney General Kathleen Kane refused to do so. The wildly unpopular Corbett faces a very tough re-election this November.
District Court Judge John E. Jones, a George W. Bush appointee, described the state’s ban on marriage quality as “an injustice” and wrote in his rather moving decision today, featuring section headers that mirror the classic wedding vows, that “all couples deserve equal dignity in the realm of civil marriage.”
“In future generations the label same-sex marriage will be abandoned, to be replaced simply by marriage,” he concluded. “We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history.”
UPDATE 5/21/2014: As he did after the court’s recent rejection of PA’s polling place Photo ID restriction law, Corbett has now announced he will not appeal the trouncing his side of the argument received in court yesterday. Let the weddings, and equality, begin…
