Charleston Gazette: West Virginia Attorney General on Wrong Side of History

Virginia has a relationship with West Virginia much like that which Alabama has with Mississippi: the eastern neighbor can always point to the state to the west as being worse than they are.  Now, the Charleston Gazette has run an editorial that notes that West Virginia's Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, unlike Mark Herring in Virginia, is on the wrong side of history in his defense of West Virginia's anti-gay ban on same sex marriage.  The paper goes on to predict that Morrisey will fail in his effort.  Here are editorial highlights:

A federal judge in Cincinnati announced Friday that he will strike down part of Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage. 

He joins a tidal wave of morality change that is sweeping America. Already, 18 states have legalized gay wedlock, with more poised to follow. The U.S. Supreme Court obliterated most of the Republican-passed Defense of Marriage Act, which ostracized same-sex weddings. Gays now serve openly in the U.S. military. Many states have outlawed discrimination against them. America’s values are evolving with remarkable speed.

Therefore, we predict that West Virginia’s Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey will fail in his attempt to deny this state’s gays an equal right to wed.

Like most rural, conservative places, West Virginia passed a law to prevent homosexuals from marrying. The law forbade the state to recognize such marriages performed in other states. Repeatedly, fundamentalists sought to lock this prejudice into the state constitution. 

Last fall, three West Virginia couples filed a federal human rights suit challenging the state’s ban. The case is before U.S. Judge Robert Chambers in Huntington. Morrisey leaped into court to oppose marriage equality. He calculates that the action will bring him conservative mountain votes in the next election.

But Morrisey is on the wrong side of history. America is turning more tolerant, and past bigotry is disappearing. Those who defend it will be pushed aside by the progress of democracy.

A half-century ago, it was a felony to be gay in West Virginia. Anyone caught in same-gender sex could be sentenced to the old stone prison at Moundsville. But gay sex was legalized in this state

in the 1970s, and the U.S. Supreme Court finally made it legal nationwide in 2003

We hope Judge Chambers follows the Ohio judge and voids West Virginia’s discrimination against gays and lesbians. Morrisey may reap thousands of rural votes for his defense of discrimination — but he’s destined to lose in the long run. The tide of history is abundantly clear.

Like in Southwest Virginia, rural fundamentalists are holding West Virginia back and harming its future by their hate and fear based religious bigotry.