Suit seeks to overturn Pa.'s ban on same-sex marriage
HARRISBURG - More than a decade ago, Angela Gillem and Gail Lloyd each had rings tattooed on the finger where others wear wedding bands - in a rich, permanent ink - to mark their commitment to spending the rest of their lives together.
HARRISBURG - More than a decade ago, Angela Gillem and Gail Lloyd each had rings tattooed on the finger where others wear wedding bands - in a rich, permanent ink - to mark their commitment to spending the rest of their lives together.
Some years later, the Philadelphia couple bought real rings because, they say, there has never been a question about whether they wanted to marry - only about whether they could.
On Tuesday, Gillem, Lloyd, and nearly two dozen other plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to overturn Pennsylvania's ban on same-sex marriage.
The suit, announced from the steps of the Capitol Rotunda, alleges that the state's Defense of Marriage Act, along with its refusal to marry same-sex couples or recognize such marriages from other states, violates a fundamental right to marry as well as the Constitution's equal-protection clause.
Gov. Corbett and state Attorney General Kathleen Kane are among the named defendants. Both said through spokesmen that they were reviewing the suit.
Corbett, a Republican, has voiced support for the gay-marriage ban. Kane, a Democrat, said in her 2012 campaign that she favors same-sex marriage rights. "But the attorney general has to represent the commonwealth," she said at a candidates' debate. "So that puts you in a precarious position. What do you do now?"
The suit, being brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and volunteer lawyers from a Philadelphia firm, Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, comes weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
"When you are little, you know that one day you will grow up and get married to the person you love. It's what we all want," said Lloyd, 55, a filmmaker and artist who has been with Gillem, a clinical psychologist and professor at Arcadia University, for 17 years. "I grew up, but I can't get married."
The law in question, passed by Pennsylvania legislators in 1996, not only banned same-sex marriage, it specified that the state would not honor such marriages from other states.
The suit contends the state has no legitimate interest in banning same-sex marriage, and that the ban disparages and injures lesbian and gay couples and their families by denying them a long list of legal and financial protections afforded to heterosexual couples.
"This is no doubt the most important civil-rights lawsuit in the nation right now," said Mark A. Aronchick, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers.
Added Witold J. Walczak, the Pennsylvania ACLU's legal director: "Nobody here is trying to change the definition of marriage. Marriage is about love and family and commitment. . . . If we win this case, marriage will be no different than it is today, except that it will be fairer."
Walczak said the suit had been in the works since early this year, and reflected the nation's changing laws and evolving public opinion on the issue.
Some advocates said Tuesday that the nation could be reaching a tipping point: the intersection where advocacy and public opinion meet to create a significant change in society.
"If we're not at that moment, we're damn close," said Ted Martin, executive director of Equality Pennsylvania, an advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Pennsylvanians. "Poll after poll shows people in support when they understand. They're in support of nondiscrimination, they're in support of marriage equality. . . . We know now we really have the public on our side."
