“There’s that little voice inside of you that tells you when you’ve done something right, and when you’ve done something wrong,” said Fred W. Thiele Jr., who represents the Hamptons. “That vote just never felt right to me. That little voice kept gnawing away at me.” Mr. Thiele’s district overlaps with the Senate district of Kenneth P. LaValle, whom gay rights advocates consider to be among the half-dozen or so Republicans open to considering a yes vote.
Janet L. Duprey, a Republican whose district along the Canadian border in the North Country overlaps with the Senate district of Elizabeth Little, another Republican who gay rights supporters believe is within reach, said a lesbian couple who live on her street helped change her mind.
“They are asking only for equal protection under the law,” Ms. Duprey said. “They deserve no less than to have the same rights and ability to share their love.”
Bob Reilly, a Democratic assemblyman whose district includes parts of Saratoga and Albany Counties, apologized to colleagues for voting no in 2007 before casting a yes vote on Tuesday.
New York Deputy Secretary for Education Duffy Palmer addresses some of the lies being told about marriage equality and what it will mean for kids in public schools. Watch and learn, then join the discussion about what marriage means to you!
In an editorial, the Tonawanda News takes the rhetoric out of the debate over marriage equality and breaks it down to the basics–the rights of couples and their children.
Too quickly this debate is moved from the arena of public policy into one fought on religious grounds. Paterson and state lawmakers are not religious leaders, and those who support the measure do not seek to weaken those religious institutions that stand in opposition.
This is a legal question — a debate over public policy, and whether our laws treat all New Yorkers fairly. They don’t.
If justice is truly blind, then surely gay people deserve the same legal protections as straight people. Rights like hospital visitation, joint tax filings and child adoption are granted to some in our state, but not all. That is the very definition of injustice.
If your religious beliefs are offended, we would question why. Your church will never be legally obligated to perform, or even recognize, homosexual marriages if it doesn’t want to.
Four states now allow gay marriage and none have been besieged by plagues or fallen into the sea. Indeed, it’s been the opposite. States that have allowed gay marriage see a drop in divorce rates. More children have loving homes.
“I didn’t support the bill in 2007 because I thought equal rights could be guaranteed through civil unions. Since then more states have experimented with civil unions as separate but equal, only to find that discrimination persisted in health care and other areas. The only way to ensure equality is by giving all couples access to the same civil right – the right to marry.”
Separate but equal, is still not equal–and it is good to hear the case being made by conservatives like Assemblyman Thiele.
