Posted on 11/18/2003 10:42:11 AM PST by NYer
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) _ Tuesday's ruling by Massachusetts' highest court that same-sex couples are entitled to wed has energized the effort to make gay marriages legal in New York.
``For a lot of legislators who thought they wouldn't have to look at gay marriage for a decade or so ... this is certainly showing New York is behind where they should be in terms of granting full protection for all New Yorkers,'' said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the state's largest gay and lesbian lobbying group. Van Capelle said no special lawsuits are planned in New York seeking to replicate the Massachusetts court ruling, but he did say the ruling will likely fuel civil rights cases. He said gays and lesbians are being denied many of the legal and financial rights and benefits of marriage in New York and other states.
The gay rights lobbyist said decisions like the one Tuesday by the Massachusetts court, and earlier rulings in Vermont, Hawaii and Alaska, offer political cover for politicians reluctant to support gay marriages. But he said these rulings also often prompt a backlash from opponents. That came quickly on Tuesday in New York. ``These are assaults on our culture,'' said state Conservative Party Chairman Michael Long. ``It's an assault on what has been tradition since the beginning of mankind ... So why not recognize three people or four people to be married? Once you go over that line ... you will finish the family structure.''
Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Manhattan Democrat, said in an interview on WROW-AM radio in Albany that he was unsure if New York's constitution could be interpreted the way the Massachusetts court interpreted its state constitution.
There was no immediate comment from state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, a Rensselaer County Republican. Republican Gov. George Pataki hasn't seen details of the decision and it would be premature to comment, said spokesman Joseph Conway.
Van Capelle predicted Tuesday's decision will be a turning point for gay marriages. It will also increase the number of gay New Yorkers marrying in other states and in Canada and will put pressure on state government, which usually recognizes marriage licenses issued out of state, he added. ``Ten years from now, people will be asking you where you were on Nov. 18 when this decision came down,'' Van Capelle said.
If it is your goal to link homosexuals with blacks, you should take that up with the black community. As for me, until they find a way to identify whether a corpse was gay or straight, I'll continue to see homosexuality as a behavior.
Nobody has any more right to be gay than to be homophobic.
Shalom.
They might be happy that way, since you are mostly talking about Muslims. There are few if any Christians who think that.
There are Christians whose worldview is colored by their faith, but they still believe that what they believe is true and obvious to anyone who can reason.
Shalom.
Feel free to find a post where Christians are trying to install religion into U.S. law. They are trying to maintain prohibitions against homosexual sex, but these are for pragmatic reasons. They will cite the Bible for other Christians, but the pragmatic reasons to keep homosexual behavior illegal are well documented here. (Note, not to make it illegal but to keep it illegal.)
It's the pro-gays who are writing laws to force you to accept their beliefs, not the Christians.
Shalom.
Christians aren't trying to make homosexual behavior illegal, they are trying to keep it illegal. It's the queers who are trying to change the law. As I pointed out in the post to which you replied, Christians do quote the Bible to other believers, but you don't have to look far to see the scientific and medical reasons for keeping homosexuality illegal posted by Christians on this board.
Just because Biblical values happen to line up with reality doesn't mean that attempting to legislate reality is an effort to create a theocracy.
Shalom.
Nice strawman. Homosexuality was illegal in nearly every state of the Union for most of our country's history and we never had a bedroom police. Bedroom police is a bogeyman created by people who've run out of arguments.
Since you seem to prefer regurgitating rubbish rather than thinking about the subject, think about this.
If homosexuality is only about what people do in private, why does it keep getting on the news?
In the future, engage your brain before posting on FR.
Shalom.
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