A judge in Pennsylvania rejected two attempts that tried to block a lawsuit challenging the state's ban on gay marriage, ABC News reported.
Following U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III's decision to allow the lawsuit from Pennsylvania's secretaries of the departments of Health and Revenue and Bucks County's register of wills, the battle to end the state' 17-year law against same-sex marriage will continue.
At the end of his 10-page decision, Jones wrote that lawyers involved should be "fully prepared" to discuss the starting date of the trial during a Nov. 22 conference.
Pennsylvania is currently the only state in the northeast region that does not allow gay marriage.
The lawsuit, filed by civil rights lawyers on behalf of a widow, 10 couples and one of the couples' two teenage daughters on Jul. 9, is the first challenge to the state's ban.
Since July, a total of five more cases have been made against the law in both state and federal courts, including the decision by an official in a Philadelphia suburb to hand our marriage licenses to gay couples.
"The jurisprudence of equal protection and substantive due process has undergone what can only be characterized as a sea change since 1972," Jones wrote, referring to the 1972 Supreme Court case the defendants cited, which said a state's same-sex marriage ban did not violate the constitution.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett, a staunchly anti-gay marriage advocate, has vowed to fight against the challenges -- making some questionable remarks during his campaign to keep the ban.
During an appearance in October on WHP-TV, an anchor asked him about his comments comparing gay people getting married to children getting married.
"It was an inappropriate analogy, you know," Corbett said. "I think a much better analogy would have been brother and sister, don't you?"
