Subscribe to RSSDemocrats Control Albany: When Will Gays Marry?
On Saturday, February 7, New York State Senate Majority Leader Malcolm A. Smith confirmed what many supporters of same-sex marriage in New York State had already feared since the November elections: same-sex marriage may not be legalized in New York in 2009. During his keynote speech at a Human Rights Campaign gala, Smith, a same-sex marriage advocate, told the assembled crowd that, “Although we do not have the number of votes at this time needed to pass the marriage equality gender bill this legislative session, we are committed to pursuing its passage.” With that statement, he sent a clear message: we’ll try, but we may not win, at least not any time soon.
In breaking his and the New York political establishment’s months-long silence about this issue, Smith put a damper on the excitement of members of New York’s gay and lesbian community and other supporters of marriage equality in the state. Since November, when Democrats won control of the Senate for the first time in decades, that silence had been deafening. In theory, marriage equality in New York should be imminent. At the urging of Governor Spitzer, Assembly passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in 2007. If such a bill came across his desk, Governor Paterson has said he would sign it into law. The only obstacle, or so it seemed, was the Senate’s long-standing Republican majority, who would not even allow a vote on such a bill.
Then-Minority Leader Malcolm Smith vowed that if his party became the majority in the Senate after the 2008 elections, it would remove the last roadblock to legal same-sex marriage in the state. At an Empire State Pride Agenda fundraiser in 2007, his tone could hardly have been more confident as he declared, “We’re going to make sure [same-sex marriage] happens in ‘08, when we take over the majority.” Same-sex marriage supporters rejoiced, and during the 2008 election season, their money poured into Democrats’ campaigns for marginal seats like the one in New York’s 3rd District that Brian X. Foley captured, with the help of Stony Brook College Democrats, from Cesar Trunzo, the 82-year old Republican dinosaur who had occupied it since 1972.
But no sooner did Democrats capture the requisite 32 seats on Election Day 2008 than hopes for marriage equality began to disintegrate. Three Democratic senators — the so-called “Gang of Three” — refused to caucus with their party and support Smith for majority leader. Among them, two did so because even the chance of equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian New Yorkers was enough for them to start an insurrection. The two miscreants were Reubén Díaz, Sr. of the Bronx, a Pentecostal minister positively brimming with anti-gay hatred, and Carl Kruger of Brooklyn, a man so cozy with the old Republican majority that now-indicted former Majority Leader Joe Bruno made him the only minority member in Senate history to be given a committee chairmanship. Suddenly, dramatically, the possibility of marriage equality in 2009, so recently heralded by Mr. Smith, appeared to be up in the air thanks to a few Albany troublemakers.
Eventually, after days of wrangling, Smith made a deal with the Gang of Three. He would become president pro tempore of the Senate (its most senior post), while newly-elected Sen. Pedro Espada, Jr., whose unsavory history includes numerous fines for campaign finance violations and who broke with the party over underrepresentation of Hispanics, not same-sex marriage, would become majority leader. But the deal soon disintegrated over Smith’s misgivings. Perhaps his conscience got at him; a document later published on the New York Times’ web site indicated that the deal would have involved a promise by Smith not to bring a same-sex marriage bill to a vote in the Senate. Regardless of the motive, the deal collapsed shortly after it was supposedly sealed with a handshake and, sickeningly, a prayer from the abominable Rev. Díaz. Yet magically, the Gang of Three all wound up caucusing with the Democrats. Smith became majority leader and president pro tempore. And nobody wanted to talk about same-sex marriage.
“We’re at least two votes away from becoming the first state to legalize same-sex marriage by legislation rather than by court ruling.”
In such a situation one could hardly help but wonder whether some other, less-public deal was brokered, selling out the civil rights of gay and lesbian New Yorkers to keep Díaz and Kruger in the party. For his part, Díaz said he was persuaded to support Smith by his son, a Democratic member of the Assembly and a same-sex marriage supporter. Díaz had earlier said that, were his son up for the post of majority leader, he wouldn’t support him because of his support for gay and lesbian New Yorkers’ civil rights. In such a situation one could hardly help but wonder how committed Malcolm Smith really was to the rights of same-sex couples in this state, whether he would really fight to the bitter end for what he knows is right. One could hardly help but wonder if perhaps the sorry spectacle of Proposition 8 in California had given certain people cold feet. One could hardly help but wonder a lot of things, given the apparent information blackout from Albany and the thoroughly transparent standard cop-out line offered instead: that we really have to focus on the economy right now, as though the expansive government of the State of New York couldn’t cut funding for education and healthcare and ensure equal rights for same-sex couples all at once.
But now we have an answer. Majority Leader Smith is still committed to legalizing same-sex marriage (or so he claims), but he promised in 2007 what he now thinks he can’t deliver in 2009. And indeed, you don’t have to be a math major to figure out that if, as is likely, none of the Senate’s 30 Republicans will vote in favor of marriage equality, nor at least two of the 32 Democrats (the despicable Díaz and the contemptible Kruger), we’re at least two votes away from becoming the first state to legalize same-sex marriage by legislation rather than by a court ruling, as it has been in Connecticut and Massachusetts and, for a little while, California. Smith says he is still working to change that. Now it’s time for him to prove it.
Post-Release Note: This online version of the print article has inconsequential modifications.
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