Blog for Equality Redux

Last year, I participated in "Blog for Equality Day" on this blog. While I have been blogging less regularly this year, equality is still near and dear to my heart.

Once again, the Pennsylvania State House is wasting time and taxpayer money on ridiculous pet projects. The state of Pennsylvania has repeatedly voted against re-defining marriage as between one man and one woman in a special constitutional amendment, but repeatedly our pathetic sniveling hypocritical house members keep leading the charge against equality.

House Bill 1434 is the latest iteration and was introduced on May 3, 2011 by Representative Darryl Metcalfe, a Republican from Butler county. He is also responsible for House Bill 934 which would require everyone to show a government-issued ID to vote and House Bill 2479, an Arizona-style immigration law, because Butler County and Pittsburgh are simply overrun by immigrants. If you live in Butler, please vote this clown out of office, so he is forced to stop merely pandering to his conservative constituents instead of fixing our broken legislature and economy.

Honestly, this bill has a long ways to go before it can do any damage. There are 3 steps to amending the state Constitution:
1) Pass the bill in House and Senate in year 1.
2) Publish it in newspapers around the state, then pass the bill in House and Senate in year 2.
3) Finally, there would be a statewide referendum.

The likelihood of all that happening is slim to none as cooler heads will prevail. But that doesn't mean that it's not a hateful joke of a bill. Read more outraged opinions here.

Compromising Positions

I'm all for compromise. I understand that oftentimes at the political level it's the only way to get things done and some change is often better than none.

In fact, I back laws to support civil unions for gay couples instead of gay marriage because the important thing to me is the result not the nomenclature. I understood that in order to pass a smoking ban at the state level, there would need to be stupid exceptions involving casinos and mom-and-pop bars.

But everybody draws the line somewhere.

And I draw it here:
If you're passing a non-discrimination bill, you shouldn't let anyone discriminate. Either it's right or it's wrong. Yet Allegheny County council just passed a bill that said you can't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity EXCEPT if you're a charitable, fraternal, or religious organization. What??? If you're a blood-sucking corporation, you better not discriminate but if you're a "charitable" organization, you can?

And as Sarah Rose, an attorney with the ACLU says:
"the problem with the current version of the bill is that it gives certain religious organizations an advantage over other groups, thereby violating the establishment clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Luckily for the religious organizations in Allegheny county, the courts take a long time to sort these things out, so they'll be able to discriminate ad nauseum for the next decade or so.

So here's a shout-out to the Pittsburgh city council who managed to pass an anti-discrimination bill back in 1990 without resorting to illegal compromises. I implore you to do the same in regards to smoking.