Pushing for marriage equality in Albany

Volume 1, Number 34 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | May 11 - 17, 2007

Talking Point

By Paul Schindler

Here’s where the LGBT community and its allies stand in the spring of 2007 in the fight for marriage equality. Governor Eliot Spitzer has introduced his bill, Senate Republican Majority Leader Joe Bruno has said he will not move the issue in his chamber, but Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a Lower East Side Democrat, has signaled that he expects the matter to be discussed in the majority party conference, made up of a whopping 108 of the 150 assemblymembers.

That means a vote could happen in the Assembly prior to its recess on June 21. Passage would dramatically alter the debate in New York State.

Daniel O’Donnell, the Upper West Side gay Democrat who is the marriage bill’s new Assembly sponsor, is pledging to put his all into the effort to get that floor vote and is looking to sign up co-sponsors by next Tuesday, May 15. The Empire State Pride Agenda, in its running tally, shows 68 Assembly votes in favor of marriage equality, in a chamber where 76 is a majority.

Micah Kellner, an out bisexual Democrat who is the current favorite in a June 5 contest to fill an Upper East Side vacancy, would make 69 ayes.

Only 33 assemblymembers have voiced clear opposition, which leaves 48 votes up for grabs.

Between now and next Tuesday, everybody who cares about this issue should contact undecided members of the Assembly to support the Spitzer-O’Donnell measure, which is sponsored in the Senate by Chelsea’s out gay Democrat Tom Duane.

Complete contact information for all members of the state Assembly is available at http://assembly.state.ny.us/.

The bill will need to win support both in the Assembly Democratic conference and the Judiciary Committee chaired by Brooklyn’s Helene Weinstein before it goes to the floor. Of 16 Judiciary members, eight have voiced their support, three their opposition — which leaves five members, Weinstein included, still uncommitted.

As a first order of business, those five should be contacted — Weinstein of Brooklyn, Michele Titus of Queens, Peter Rivera of the Bronx, Thomas Alfano of Nassau, and Tom O’Mara from the Elmira area upstate. Weinstein, Titus, and Rivera are all Democrats.

In addition to these undecided members, an additional 25 legislators who have not stated their position on same-sex marriage represent communities in the New York City metropolitan area. In New York City alone, there are 18 more assemblymembers—beyond Weinstein, Titus, and Rivera—who have not taken a position on our right to marry. Every single one of them is a Democrat.

They all need to be battered with phone calls, visits, and e-mails.

In Brooklyn, the targets for lobbying are Peter Abbate, Jr., Alec Brook-Krasney, Karim Camara, William Colton, Steven Cymbrowitz, Rhoda Jacobs, Joseph Lentol, Alan Maisel, and Nick Perry.

In the Bronx, we still need answers from Carmen Arroyo, Ruben Diaz, Jr., Carl Heastie, and José Rivera.

In Queens, contact Barbara Clark, Margaret Markey, and William Scarborough. And in Staten Island, Michael Cusick has yet to take a stand.

Among the remaining uncommitted metro area assemblymembers is one Democrat — Earline Hooper in Nassau. There are also seven area Republicans that LGBT constituents should reach out to — James Conte, Joseph Saladino, and Rob Walker in Nassau; Philip Boyle and Andrew Raia in Suffolk County; Annie Rabbitt in Rockland County; and Marcus Molinaro in Columbia/ Dutchess Counties.

Upstate, in addition to undecided Judiciary Committee members, there are another 18 uncommitted assemblymembers — eight Democrats and 10 Republicans. The Pride Agenda Web site at http://www.prideagenda.org has a complete tally of those legislators.

The one member not yet discussed here is the only Manhattan Democrat not supporting gay marriage — the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver. The speaker has made clear that he will not take a position on the issue until his fellow Assembly Democrats, in their conference, come to a conclusion on whether to advance the measure.

Should the Democrats decide to move marriage equality to the Assembly floor, Silver must become a leader in that effort. Along with Spitzer, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Silver can play a formative role in the emerging debate over marriage equality — not only in passing the bill in the Assembly, but just as importantly in demanding action in the Republican Senate, which seems determined to dig in its heels at least for the foreseeable future.

Nothing that Spitzer, Quinn, and Bloomberg can do at this point for the cause of marriage equality in New York is more critical than bringing Shelly Silver into the fold.

Paul Schindler is the editor of our sister publication Gay City News.