| I don't often say this, but today I am rather proud of the New York State Assembly. Late last night the Assembly finally passed a bill guaranteeing full marriage equality to all New Yorkers. The New York state Assembly now becomes the only house of any legislature in the nation outside of California to pass such legislation. Should the bill become law, which, to be honest, I believe is rather doubtful this session and probably next as well, New York would be the first state in the nation to extend full marriage equality through a legislative process. From Gay City News:
New York State Assembly Approves Gay Marriage Law
In an historic vote late in the evening on Tuesday, June 19, the New York State Assembly approved legislation guaranteeing marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples.
The measure was approved by a vote of 85 to 61 after a floor debate that lasted more than three hours.
The marriage equality legislation was introduced by Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer on April 27, and sponsored in the Assembly by Daniel O'Donnell, an Upper West Side Democrat. O'Donnell and his partner John Banta were among the plaintiffs denied marriage rights in a ruling last July by New York's highest court.
"It is extraordinarily important to have actual, real live gay people in the legislative body who can speak to the issue," O'Donnell told Gay City News hours before the vote. "It gets past the esoteric arguments about equality, which are important, but they are not the same thing as saying, 'I want this.' It's not the same as, 'This is important to me.' On the floor today, I'm going to talk about John and how we've been together for 26 years and about my fear of going out one day and getting hit by a bus and not having taken care of my partner."
...
Prior to this week, only in California - where the Senate and Assembly passed a gay marriage bill in 2005, which was vetoed by Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger - has a legislative body in the U.S. affirmatively embraced equal civil marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
In the discussion, some lawmakers even cited the shortcomings of New Jersey's recently passed civil unions regime.
O'Donnell as the bill's sponsor answered specific questions from his colleagues, emphasizing that neither religious nor public officials are required to perform any marriage ceremony under current statute and that nothing would change on that score. He also talked about evidence emerging from New Jersey's four-month experience with civil unions, in which both gay advocates and state officials have received hundreds of complaints from gay and lesbian couples who say that employers and institutions such as hospitals have not treated them as spouses, as the law requires.
It seems the debate was "decorous" though GCN notes this bit from an Assemblyman from Brooklyn:
Several assemblymembers who spoke in opposition focused on religious concerns, none more than Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat. Holding up a letter from four Jewish organizations urging defeat of the bill, Hikind said he would not change his vote "unless God sends me a message in the next two hours." He pointed to recent articles in Time magazine and the Boston Globe that he said discussed the potential legalization of incest.
"Maybe we should include incest in this bill, get it all over," Hikind said. "It is coming."
Um, thanks, Assemblyman Dobson...
More about this later today.
UPDATE: Full roll call vote on the flip... |
