Gay marriage ban stalled PA.

By BERNARD HARRIS and TOM MURSE at lancaster online

State Sen. Mike Brubaker pulled the plug on his controversial proposal to constitutionally ban gay marriages and civil unions on Tuesday after learning it would have little chance of passage in the state House.

Yet, the Warwick Township Republican this morning stopped short of saying the proposal is dead.

Brubaker asked Senate leaders to table the measure Tuesday afternoon after learning it was headed to the House State Government Committee if it passed the Senate.

Rep. Babette Josephs, the Philadelphia Democrat who chairs that committee, has denounced the proposal as "lousy public policy."

"There is no point in going forward unless the House changes it's position," Brubaker said this morning.

He held out hope the proposal could still go to another committee. He also would not speculate on whether he will reintroduce the measure in the next legislative session.

Michael Geer, president of the Pennsylvania Family Institute, also declined to predict the future of the bill but said he hoped supporters would pressure leaders in the Democratic-controlled House to act on it.

"We're hoping for action because the people of Pennsylvania deserve a vote," he said. "There's no question there's a challenge to get this done to be on the 2009 ballot, which was our hope.

"What House Speaker Denny O'Brien and Democratic leadership indicated yesterday was that they are willing to consign this bill to an untimely death and not let the people decide," Geer said.

The abrupt shelving of the bill came after a boisterous rally Monday calling for its rejection, and after a day of discussions between House and Senate leaders about the proposal's fate in the House.

Erik Arneson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, said leaders of the Republican-controlled Senate decided to back off its planned vote because the "knowledge that the committee chairwoman is opposed and has no plans of moving the bill" effectively killed it.

Even if the Senate had approved the amendment Tuesday, and the House then approved it, both chambers would have to approve it again in the next legislative session before it could reach the voters in the form of a referendum question. The earliest a voter referendum could happen is 2009.

Brubaker said the proposal had bipartisan support in the Senate and the language in the bill is the same language approved by House members in the last session.

He said is does not change the state's existing 12-year-old law limiting marriage to the union of a man and woman. With a referendum vote it would embed that language in the state Constitution.

Brubaker said he believes it is important to give the people the power to do that.

"There are three other states that by court order have changed the definition of marriage," he said. "If you change our definition of marriage, then it should be done by the voters, not by a judge."

More than 1,200 state laws refer to marriage. Altering the state's definition of marriage would call into question the legality of all of those statutes, he said.

Brubaker maintained that the proposal has been the subject of healthy, civil debate in the Senate. He said he'll know within the next two weeks whether there is any chance the proposal can be revived and debated in the House this year.

Forty-one states have laws restricting marriage to heterosexual couples. But only 27 of them have constitutional language imposing such limits. Five states have no laws barring same-sex unions.