{"id":227272,"date":"2026-06-24T22:34:45","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T22:34:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/227272\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T22:34:45","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T22:34:45","slug":"upper-darby-scraps-decades-old-anti-lgbtq-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/227272\/","title":{"rendered":"Upper Darby scraps decades-old anti-LGBTQ law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Damien Christopher Warsavage, founder of Upper Darby Pride<\/a>, a local LGBTQ advocacy group, said one of the group\u2019s board members first shed light on the ordinance. After its discovery, community members reached out to Upper Darby\u2019s elected leaders and demanded action.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cI made it very, very explicitly clear: It doesn\u2019t matter if you guys weren\u2019t the actual edition of the council that passed this egregious ordinance \u2014 it\u2019s the fact that it\u2019s your situation to handle now,\u201d Warsavage said.\n<\/p>\n

Before the pandemic uprooted everything, Upper Darby Pride was planning its first festival. And even though that ordinance flew well under the radar, it could have been a threat to members of the LGBTQ community, Warsavage said.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cIf someone wanted to cause trouble, lawfully, whether I liked it or not, they would have had a very good leg to stand,\u201d Warsavage said.\n <\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t the first time a bigoted town ordinance has been discovered in municipal codes. Virginia\u2019s Commission to Examine Racial Inequity found almost 100 such laws<\/a> in the books across the state that said things like, \u201cNo child shall be required to attend integrated schools.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

But on finding one in their own code, members of the Upper Darby Council acted rather quickly. According to Council President Laura Wentz, the ordinance was brought to their attention on Feb. 21. The council reached out to the solicitors to get it repealed.\n<\/p>\n

\u201cThe language is not representative of Upper Darby Township, it\u2019s offensive to the LGBTQIA+ community, and it\u2019s just generally offensive. So I did not hesitate to find a way to repeal the ordinance in total,\u201d Richardson said.\n<\/p>\n

On March 17, the council repealed the ordinance unanimously. But the investigation into the law led to another discovery: It was actually a duplication of a provision in the state\u2019s criminal code. Pennsylvania currently has an identical anti-LGBTQ law<\/a> on the books.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Damien Christopher Warsavage, founder of Upper Darby Pride, a local LGBTQ advocacy group, said one of the group\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[212,147,149,148,150],"class_list":["post-227272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-upper-darby","tag-delaware-county","tag-upper-darby","tag-upper-darby-headlines","tag-upper-darby-news","tag-upper-darby-township"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}