Vince Fumo, who’s retiring from the state Senate this year, put himself in a hole yesterday while questioning a pastor testifying on gay marriage. And Fumo just kept digging.
“What you’re advocating here is that we take away the rights of a minority. And I don’t think that’s right,” he told Giblert Coleman Jr., a Philadelphia pastor testifying in favor adding a gay-marriage ban to the state Constitution.
And now the first shovelful of trouble.
“If we introduced a bill on slavery, it might pass. That doesn’t make it right,” Fumo said.
“I doubt that, sir,” Coleman replied.
Then, immediately came shovelful No. 2.
“Oh, don’t bet on it in this General Assembly,” Fumo said. “I know some people up here, especially on a secret ballot, it would be almost unanimous.”
Then it was time for Sen. Gib Armstrong, chairman of the committee holding the hearing on a measure sponsored by Sen. Mike Brubaker, R-Warwick Township, that would define marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman.
“Senator Fumo, that’s out of line,” Armstrong said.
Later, Fumo issued a statement, saying he was “only exaggerating to make a point.”
Still, though, the South Philadelphia titan couldn’t resist one more dig.
“If a majority would vote to approve slavery — as was done once in this country — that wouldn’t make it right.”
OK, fair enough, but come on.
First of all, this is Pennsylvania, which passed a law in 1777 providing for the abolition of slavery by 1780.
Second, to believe what he first said, Fumo would have to believe his colleagues to be both racists and idiots. Racists for obvious reasons and idiots because the U.S. Constitution has outlawed slavery since the ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865.
Quite an exaggeration.
The good news: Fumo is leaving.