Mayoral candidates: All for marriage

A funny thing happened on the way to getting last week’s and this week’s PGN to press. You might have noticed the correction on page 11 regarding a mistake we made on one of Democratic mayoral candidate Michael Nutter’s answers, but the answer to the question before it really had people talking.
It was a simple question — one that we at PGN knew the mayor of Philadelphia had no control over. But it was a question that would reveal the feelings of the candidates more than any other and the answers surprised even us.
The question was “Do you support extending the right to marry to same-sex couples?” We purposely did not say domestic partners or civil unions. And to our utter surprise, four of the five candidates running for mayor of Philadelphia said without hesitation, “Yes.” And we never saw it coming.
This is amazing. Can any one of you out there tell me another city in this nation, other than San Francisco, where that would happen? Of course you’re all wondering who the fifth candidate was that kept us from a perfect score. It was Michael Nutter.

Bzzzt! Wrong answer! You wanna try again, Mike? Oh, you do?
…after the jump.

In my 38 years of working with and educating elected officials on GLBT issues here in Philadelphia — yes, that’s correct, 38 years — I’ve been waiting for this day. And I really expected it to be this year and to have a private celebration. Now I could just sulk about the fact that not all of the major Democratic candidates supported marriage, or I could boast that the candidate I’m supporting (U.S. Rep. Bob Brady) was one of the “yeses” or I could even tell you about plans to test Pennsylvania’s marriage law, but that’s not for this column.

This column is about what our community needs and how we deserve a mayor that fully supports our rights, which includes marriage equality. So what to do? I know Michael Nutter. So I decided to give him a call and the opportunity to get off the hook. After all, I worked with Nutter to pass Philadelphia’s domestic-partner legislation — this is a man who believes in equality.

And, true to form, Michael was courteous and we got right to the point. He stated, “When that question was asked, I looked at it from the legal rights of the mayor. The marriage law in Pennsylvania is a statewide issue, not the mayor’s. That said, I support gay marriage in Pennsylvania.”

With that said, all major candidates for mayor of Philadelphia support marriage equality. Philadelphia’s GLBT community should take a bow and take pride that its years of work have paid off.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 8:43 am.