Inquirer Editorial: Equality won't wait

New battle lines being drawn over same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania should speed the matter toward the appropriate venue - the courts - and the right resolution: equality.

Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes set in motion the standoff now playing out under a national spotlight when he began issuing marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples last month in violation of state law. "I decided to come down on the right side of history and the law," Hanes said.

On paper, the licenses give gay and lesbian couples - some of whom have been together for many years - the same status heterosexual couples enjoy. But their wedded bliss may be fleeting. Pennsylvania law restricts marriage to opposite-sex couples.

Even so, Hanes' stance should bring a measure of urgency to the cases pending in the state courts. He has helped force the issue by defying a law that should be struck down.

By failing to tackle one of the most pressing and divisive social issues of the day, lawmakers and Gov. Corbett have effectively left it to the courts. With an increasingly antiquated law denying equal rights to same-sex couples, Pennsylvania is out of step with a tide that has swept the country, especially since the U.S. Supreme Court handed gay Americans a major victory by striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act in June.

The decision turned attention to the states, 13 of which permit same-sex marriage. (New Jersey and a few others allow same-sex civil unions.) Recent polls suggest that more Americans are now ready to support equal rights.

State Attorney General Kathleen Kane has joined in the official disobedience, declining to defend the state's marriage law against an American Civil Liberties Union challenge. President Obama took a similar stance on the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 2011, when his administration stopped defending it. Government agencies continued to enforce it, and House Republicans mounted a legal defense, but in June the Supreme Court struck down its provision denying federal benefits to legally married gay couples.

Kane's position is similarly of more symbolic and political significance than practical effect. It has not stopped the Corbett administration from trying to enforce the 1996 law. Corbett's own counsel, Jim Schultz, is now in charge of defending the statute.

So it remains incumbent on the courts - though more urgently so - to advance the just cause of equality for gay Pennsylvanians.