BLOOMBERG: "NO GAY MARRIAGE"

Vanasco: NYC mayor says no marriage for New York this year

By Jennifer Vanasco, editor in chief, 365gay.com
09.21.2009 12:37pm EDT
My partner and I spent the summer trying to figure out if we could have our wedding reception in our Manhattan backyard, should marriage become legal in New York State this year.


It was looking pretty good.
Last summer, at the Democratic National Convention, a few NY state leaders assured me that if Democrats won control of the state legislature, marriage would come up and pass.

We all know how that turned out.

Still, Jenny and I were holding out hope that Gov. David Paterson, despite his waning clout and flagging poll numbers, might be able to ram a bill through before he was voted out of office.

But Michael Bloomberg, New York City’s mayor and one of its most powerful politicians (and a friend of equal marriage) now says that is a pipe dream.

Says Gay City News:

“I don’t know how to get it to come up,” [Bloomberg] said, explaining his view that having the issue move to the Senate floor may prove more difficult than rounding up the votes. “If you want my honest opinion,” Bloomberg continued, the Senate leadership is unlikely to move a gay marriage bill “when I don’t see these guys willing to stand up for less controversial issues.”

Despite the fact that the number of states with legal gay marriage quickly shot up to six this past spring, the mayor said, “I ‘m scared to death that the country is going in the wrong direction… I think on other LGBT issues they are clearly moving in the direction that I think they should go and you probably do too. It’s the marriage thing that I don’t see.”

Even in New York, where Paterson and his predecessor Eliot Spitzer have been outspoken in supporting gay marriage, Bloomberg argued, “Whether anybody who runs for governor next year will stand up for gay marriage, I’ll bet you 25 cents no.”

Read Gay City News for detailed info on the depressing political maneuvering.

Jenny and I both want to get married – and celebrate our marriage – in a state where it’s actually legal (New York recognizes marriages performed out of state, but we want the whole, “By power invested in me by the state of New York thing. And yes, we know that state marriage in ANY state doesn’t mean any federal rights.)

It is depressing that after the excitement of last year, when it seemed like states were steadily lining up to bring equality to gay couples, we now might lose marriage in Maine in November, Washington State domestic partnerships are threatened, and New York, which looked so promising, now looks so unlikely.

Here’s hoping that Bloomberg is wrong – or just half right – and that gay and lesbian couples like us won’t have to schelp to Connecticut (admittedly just over the border) or Massachusetts. We want to get married in New York. And we should be able to.

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