Pennsylvania Court Strikes Down Special Privilege Ordinance for Homosexuals

ALLENTOWN, PA, June 21, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a victory for taxpayers, employers, and landlords, a Pennsylvania state trial court ruled Monday that the City of Allentown lacked authority to pass an ordinance in 2002 to grant special rights and privileges based on sexual orientation and “gender identity.”  Lawyers allied with the Alliance Defence Fund (ADF) filed the case last July noting that the “so-called ‘protections’ meant that our clients could not make rental decisions or employment decisions based on these factors, which, of course, conflicted with their freedom of conscience.”  The court agreed in Hartman v. City of Allentown that the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act does not provide for protections based on sexual orientation and “gender identity” and that, therefore, Allentown had no authority to pass the ordinance.  Allentown’s ordinance defined “gender identity” as a person’s “self-perception, or perception by others, as male or female.” The ordinance applied to all employers, including religious employers.  It also applied to a landlord’s decisions about tenants.  “Taxpayers, employers, and landlords should not be forced by a city government to honor lifestyles they find morally offensive,” said ADF Chief Counsel Benjamin Bull.  “The Alliance Defense Fund will continue to defend people of faith against those who would use the law to impose such rules upon them.”