Group Says Pennsylvania Still Needs To Protect Other LGBT Rights
By Kim Glovas
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- While many in the LGBT community are celebrating the US Supreme Court's decision today legalizing same-sex marriage, one advocacy group in Pennsylvania says the fight for gay rights isn't over.
Officials of Equality Pennsylvania say today's ruling is a huge victory on a national level, but in Pennsylvania it is still legal to discriminate in other ways against people based on their sexual preference.
"It's a little bit bittersweet," says spokeswoman Levana Layendecker, "because it's still legal in Pennsylvania to be fired from your job, evicted from your home, or turned away from a business just for being gay or transgender."
She says 34 municipalities have laws in place forbidding discrimination based on sexual preference, Philadelphia among them, but no county lawmaking bodies have yet made such discrimination illegal on the county level.
Layendecker says legislation has been introduced at the state level but has never passed.
But, she adds, new bills are expected in Harrisburg during this legislative session.