When something non-controversial happens, usually it isn't news. But, in my view, a resolution passed by the Democratic State Committee of Pennsylvania at its September 8, 2007 meeting was significant precisely because it was non-controversial.
That resolution said that it supported passage of a Pennsylvania bill banning discrimination in employment against gays. That bill is similar to bills that have passed in about twenty other states, the counties of Erie and Philadelphia, and various Pennsylvania municipalities.
Twenty-five years ago, the Philadelphia City Council became the first legislative body in Pennsylvania, and one of the first in the nation, to ban employment discrimination against gays. I helped my father, City Councilman David Cohen, work on that effort.
Many church groups were opposed. There were a lot of predictions of doom and gloom if the bill passed. Then it passed, and Democratic Mayor William Green, under conflicting pressures, let it become law without his signature. The following year, a slate of Council candidates ran in the Democratic primary calling for repeal of the law. They lost, badly.
The bill the Democratic State Committee backed is co-sponsored by each of the 21 Democratic Senators in the 50 member Senate. In the 203 member House, something like 71 of the 102 Democrats of the 203 members are co-sponsors of the bill.
So the bill needs some Senate Republicans and some more Democrats and some Republicans in the House to become law. Democratic State Committee members are elected solely by Democrats. Democratic legislators in rural areas (Pennsylvania is a heavily rural state despite the presence of cities and metropolitan areas) need the support of some Republicans and independents to win.
But the unanimous endorsement by the Democratic State Committee of a bill it had never previously endorsed is certainly a positive sign.
It is a sign that the message of the bill is starting to sink in across the state: gays are human beings deserving to be treated with the same rights as other human beings. Banning discrimination on the basis of homosexuality does not endorse homosexuality any more than banning discrimination on the basis of religion endorses Judaism, Buddhism, or Taoism.
What it does endorse is the idea that there is one human race, and all of us, whatever our sexual orientation, are members of it. This is hardly a new position in Pennsylvania politics; legislation like this has been endorsed previously by Governor Ed Rendell and U.S. Senator Bob Casey. But the unanimous endorsement by Pennsylvania's official grassroots Democratic leadership body makes it clear that the cultural wars within the Democratic Party are subsiding, and we are getting more and more united and inclusive.