Posted on 02/22/2004 3:57:53 AM PST by publius1
ALBANY, Feb. 21 - The census counts 46,490 same-sex-partner households in New York State, and some estimate there are a half-million gay men and lesbians living in the state. Yet New York has been strangely quiet as the issue of same-sex marriage has played out in Boston, in San Francisco, in Vermont and in other states across the country.
There have been no Stonewall-style protests, no street demonstrations at City Hall. Gay and lesbian leaders have not been besieging the State Capitol.
Two declared gay people serving in the State Legislature - both considered activists when it comes to such issues - are not exactly bombarding the legislative leaders with bills to change state laws affecting who can marry and who can not.
***
Of course, should a case reach the Court of Appeals, the state's highest court, it would be received by a bench far more conservative than it has been in the last two decades, said Vincent M. Bonventre, a law professor at Albany Law School.
"That is why groups that represent gay rights are very hesitant to bring a challenge in New York courts for civil unions or gay marriages,'' Mr. Bonventre said. "Because they don't trust this court to be willing to do what it might have done in the past."
Thomas K. Duane, a Democrat from Manhattan and the only openly gay member of the State Senate, said there was also the option of the federal courts. "If the Legislature doesn't take action, the courts will provide the leadership,'' said Mr. Duane, who is planning a March 3 forum on the topic in Albany and has drafted a marriage equality bill.
Gary D. Buseck, the legal director at Lambda Legal, a national gay and lesbian advocacy group, said the flurry of same-sex marriages elsewhere might finally prompt a serious discussion in New York's Legislature.
Short of that, he said, the developments in California, Canada and Massachusetts might well lead to court cases on recognition of marriage issues "without ever having to touch" the broader constitutional question in New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I want to be sympathetic, but I'm afraid I still don't understand what marriage gives gays--at a practical level--that civil unions don't. Does anybody?
Did the 2000 census ask for sexual preference? How do they know the difference between a homosexual household and heterosexual college roommates or flight attendants sharing an apartment?
A sense of accomplishment and victory.
...by undermining, redefining, and ultimately destroying the God-given foundational unit of western civilization, marriage and family.
As it was in the days of judges:
Judges 21:25 In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.
These people desire to call what they do "marriage", as an ultimate perversion and defilement of the normal order of human existence. Same reason the definition of "family" has been hijacked, and not just by homosexuals.
Not an accident that sodomites pilfered the well-understood symbol of God's covenant with the earth and Noah. They can wave their rainbow flags all day long, believing that the Lord will not destroy them, but they forgot about what happened in Sodom: it was a "flood" of fire and brimstone that leveled the city.
Sodom = "burning", in more ways than one.
New York gays don't believe in marriage, period.
BUMP
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