The New York Marriage Vote

After nearly six months of stalling, the New York Senate voted yesterday on marriage equality. They voted against it 38-24.

Please read Paul Schindler’s article in the Gay City News for details on the vote and what happened. Most notable in the response to the vote is the revelation from at least three sources that eight senators who had privately pledged to vote for equality went back on their word. The mass betrayal was apparently led by freshman Senator Joe Addabbo of Queens, who was elected with major help from the local LGBT community.

“We should be incredibly angry,” [bill sponsor Tom Duane] told Gay City News. “I’m incredibly angry. I think the community should be very, very, very, very, very angry.”

Stating emphatically, “I’m not the one who ever lied throughout this entire process,” Duane charged that at least eight of his colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, had broken promises made to him, and said that he felt “betrayed.”

After initially declining to respond about what the consequences of such a betrayal are, Duane stated, “I believe in redemption and rehabilitation. No matter what people did today, we need to quickly provide them an opportunity to redeem themselves. That will get us the votes we had, that we have, and that we rightly deserve.”

Duane is not the only one who is alleging duplicitous behavior on the part of state senators. Paterson, who made the extraordinary gesture of going to the Senate floor after the vote, told Gay City News, “It’s very disappointing. It’s very disheartening. Certainly the promises that were made would have made it a much closer vote, if not a successful vote.” [...]

Senator Kevin Parker, a Brooklyn Democrat, was less charitable toward those he believed had walked on their commitments.

“I’m profoundly disappointed and sad about the outcome, partly because many of us were given assurances that we had support from colleagues on both sides of the aisle who said they would vote for this today and did not,” he said. “I think this is the worst case of political cowardice that I’ve ever seen.”

Amidst the disappointment, there is reason to hope. Many senators spoke about their YES votes during debate (for some reason the NO voters were represented by only one speaker, the horrendously anti-gay Sen. Ruben Diaz, may God forgive his hate). None were more eloquent and touching than Sen. Ruth Hassell-Thompson of Suffolk, who was previously undecided on the issue.

This is important. Sen. Hassell-Thompson and others yesterday acknowledged religion and acknowledged their responsibility to lead in government regardless of strictly religious objection. We’ll get there, just not today.

Don’t lose hope.