Tag: Pennsylvania

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Pennsylvania police chief suspended for video rant made with public property

Mark Kessler, the rural Pennsylvania sheriff whose machine-gun-firing “fuck all you libtards” video went viral, has been suspended after a borough council vote of 5-1.

The punishment was not for the sentiments shared but because he used “borough property for non-borough purposes without prior borough permission” when he made the video where he’s seen shooting semiautomatic and automatic weapons.

The borough council in the coal town of Gilberton said that police Chief Mark Kessler used “borough property for non-borough purposes without prior borough permission” when he made the video where he’s seen shooting semiautomatic and automatic weapons.

Thousands of gun-rights activists descended on the town of 750 for the meeting, openly sporting firearms, CNN affiliate WPMT reported.

“I make no apologies and I have no regrets,” a defiant Kessler told the council after its 5-1 vote, according to CNN affiliate WFMZ. He added he would be back “30 days from tonight.”

Soon afterward, Kessler posted a statement on his website saying that Mayor Mary Lou Hannon and two council members — Eric Boxer and Daniel Malloy — “are conspiring behind closed doors for full termination.” “They needed to suspend first to allow themselves time to look for or make up any reason or lie,” he said.

Kessler’s supporters say he made his statements on his own time and as a private citizen; however his video rants posted on YouTube are listed under the name “Chief Kessler,” not “Mark Kessler, private citizen.”

Chief Mark Kessler suspended for using public property in violent video rant
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Pennsylvania has it’s first same-sex marriage

The first same-sex marriage has taken place in Pennsylvania. Time will tell if the union will stand up in legal circles.

Alicia Terrizzi and Loreen Bloodgood, who have been together 17 years,  are one of two couples who have been issued marriage licenses in Montgomery county after Bruce Hanes, the county Register of Wills, announced that he is willing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples yesterday. The county clerk has also said that he will approve any other same-sex couples applying for a marriage license.

Hanes, an independently elected Democrat, told reporters that he wishes to be “on the right side of history and the law.” He also cited Windsor v. United States, the Supreme Court case that torpedoed DOMA, as well as the ACLU’s current suit in federal court to overturn Pennsylvania’s same-sex marriage ban, a case that Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane has announced that she will not defend.

Molly Tack-Hooper, a spokesperson for the ACLU, noted that this is not the first time that a county has defied a state’s same-sex marriage ban:

“We know how it has played out in a few other states; we don’t know how it might turn out in Pennsylvania. Gay and lesbian couples seeking marriage licenses in Montgomery County should be aware that there might be uncertainty about the legal statuses of those marriages for a while because unfortunately in other states, governments have later invalidated the marriages.”

(via Towleroad)

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Pennsylvania: County clerk will issue marriage license to “any same-sex couple that requests one”

Pennslyvania County Register of Wills Bruce Hanes will issue marriage licenses to gay couples

Another front has opened in the battle over same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania. Montgomery County Register of Wills Bruce Hanes said Tuesday that he will issue marriage licenses to any same-sex couple that requests one.

“Based upon the advice of [my solicitor], my own analysis of the law and mindful of the Attorney General’s belief that Pennsylvania’s marriage laws are unconstitutional, I decided to come down on the right side of history and the law, and was prepared to issue a license,” to a same-sex couple that had contacted him, Hanes said in a press release.

No state or county official can stop Hanes without legal action; in his role as the official in charge of issuing marriage licenses, he answers only to the court system.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane announced this month that she will not defend the state’s ban on same-sex marriages, which is being challenged in court by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Read more at PoliticsPA.

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Pennsylvania Attorney General will not defend state in gay marriage lawsuit

Philly.com is reporting that Attorney General Kathleen Kane is expected to announce Thursday that her office won’t defend the state in a federal lawsuit that challenges Pennsylvania’s ban on gay marriage.

Read the more here.

UPDATE:  Kathleen Kane released her official statement today –

“I cannot ethically defend the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s (law banning same-sex marriage), where I believe it to be wholly unconstitutional.” – Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane

To which openly gay (and handsome) PA Rep. Brian Sims tweeted this:

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ACLU files marriage equality lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Virginia and North Carolina

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit today in Pennsylvania on behalf of 23 residents of the state who are seeking marriage equality. The lawsuit is the latest to be filed in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in favor of same-sex marriage in June.

The group of plaintiffs, which includes 10 couples, two minor children of those couples, and one widow who recently lost her partner of 29 years, argue Pennsylvania’s own Defense of Marriage Act violates both the fundamental right to marry and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The ACLU also announced today that it will amend an existing adoption lawsuit in North Carolina, and will file a marriage lawsuit in Virginia as co-counsel with the ACLU of Virginia and Lambda Legal in the coming weeks.

More at Advocate

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Out PA lawmaker Brian Sims talks about his plans for marriage equality in his state

Out (and totally woofy) gay Pennsylvania state Representative Brian Sims, along with fellow Representative Steve Carter, sat down on Sunday to discuss their plans to introduce legislation in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives that would make same-sex marriage legal in the Keystone State.

Asked about his motivation to act, Rep. Sims stated,

“I was lucky enough to be born into a country that says I won’t be treated any differently under the law based on anyone’s selective interpretation of their own faith. Right now there are upwards of a million LGBT Pennsylvanians that are being treated differently under that law than similarly situated LGBT New Yorkers or Californians and that’s a huge problem. And the moment they cross into Pennsylvania do they lose the thousand or so federal rights just attached to them? And if that’s the case, where are we at right now in our government that people lose rights by crossing a border?”

(via YouTube)

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Pennsylvania: Rep. Brian Sims plans to introduce marriage equality bill in state House

Pennsylvania state Rep. Brian Sims has announced his plan to introduce a same-sex marriage bill.

Rep. Sims, who is openly gay, says his bill will be similar to SB 719 filed in the Pennsylvania Senate by State Senator Daylin Leach last March. The bill will be cosponsored by Democratic Rep. Steve McCarter.

“About two hours ago, I shopped around a co-sponsorship memo for a marriage bill, and I’m going to introduce an LGBT marriage equality bill,” he says, adding the Supreme Court cases “helped light the fire under my colleagues to do it now.”

The co-sponsorship memo, which is sent out to House members for additional support, notes it “would re-define the definition of marriage as a civil contract between two people who enter into matrimony, and eliminate the current prohibition against same-sex marriage in our Commonwealth.

It is important to note that this bill provides protections for religious organizations and entities that do not wish to sanction, perform, or in any way recognize such marriages.”

Same-sex marriage is banned by state statute, but a state constitutional amendment banning marriage equality isn’t on the books in Pennsylvania.

(source)

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Pennsylvania: 100 state lawmakers introduce important legislation protecting LGBT citizens

100 Pennsylvania lawmakers have introduced legislation in Harrisburg that would offer wide reaching protections to LGBT citizens in the state.

PGH City Paper reports:

A broad group of state lawmakers today introduced bills HB 300/SB300, which would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression statewide in employment, housing, credit and public accommodations. And they cited a record high level of support for the measures.

“These identical proposals have a common goal — to end, once and for all, the last vestige of legal discrimination in Pennsylvania based on an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression,” said state Rep. Dan Frankel (D-Squirrel Hill), a co-sponsor of HB300 with Republican state Rep. Chris Ross, and sponsor of the bill in previous years.

Frankel noted that its the first time the bills have had such broad, bipartisan support, with 77 sponsors in the House and 25 in the Senate.

Pennsylvania’s first openly gay elected lawmaker Brian Sims spoke at the introduction. Check out the video statement above.

(source)

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City councilman faces backlash for sending email alert: “Bryan is gay”

Seriously dumb.

Councilman Matt Staniszewski, of Washington, Pennsylvania, has been reprimanded for sending out an “email alert” through the city’s emergency email alert system that said “Alert: This is a test. Bryan is gay.”

When Mayor Brenda Davis – who questioned why the councilman even had the codes to send an email on the system – addressed the councilman about the issue, he apparently responded that “gay means happy.”

He then went on to admonish the mayor saying “It’s offensive and unprofessional for the mayor to automatically assume one definition of the word when there are multiple definitions.”

Riiiiiight. That’s really what he meant. And now the Mayor is the one in the wrong?

Not thinking so pal.

Watch Jimmy Kimmel goof on the gay.

Here’s a pic of the councilman, who I hear is very gay, which means “very happy” – right?