The May 24 "Marriage law unfair" letter from Reid H. Ahl of the Butler Diversity Cooperative is riddled with errors.

He says that state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe was one of the co-sponsors of Pennsylvania's 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. While Metcalfe wholeheartedly supports the Defense of Marriage Act, he was not one of the co-sponsors.

If Ahl had done his homework, he would have known that Metcalfe was first sworn into office in January 1999, three years after this legislation was passed.

He claims that there were 11 co-sponsors of this legislation. Wrong again - there were 38 Pennsylvania House co-sponsors of the Defense of Marriage Act (House Bill 2604).

In his erroneous attempts to link a Butler County state representative, who was not even in office at the time, to this legislation, Ahl also failed to mention that every state representative serving Butler County voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. It overwhelmingly passed the Pennsylvania House by a vote of 177-16.

Ahl claimed that the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. However, the Pennsylvania Legislature, the governor who signed the legislation and the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled otherwise.

In the Pennsylvania Superior Court case of DeSanto vs. Barnsley, a homosexual couple, John DeSanto and William Barnsley, broke up. DeSanto claimed that theirs was a common law marriage under Pennsylvanian law and should be recognized as such.

The court disagreed and threw the case out, stating that if the law had meant to recognize same-sex marriage, the legislature would have to make that distinction.

The legislature did make that distinction - by more than a 90 percent margin.

Ahl ends his letter by making an appeal to the judiciary (in this case, our judges in Butler County) to legislate from the bench and "force" the state to recognize same-sex marriage. Yes, this type of end run to bypass the legislative process did work in Massachusetts, where, unfortunately, the Constitution and the separation-of-powers doctrine are abstract concepts.

However, I would respectfully suggest that if Ahl wants to effect change, he should try lobbying the legislature, just like the rest of us.

He should not go sifting through the judiciary until a judge is found who is willing to once again short-circuit the constitutional process and legislate from the bench.