Gay Marriage Bill Adopted by New York Assembly

Greg, I’m not a gigantic Spitzer fan because of his stance on this and a couple of other issues, however, for him to be “simply bad for New York and bad for this country” is premature, imo, at this point in his administration.  This state needs more than a little help in so many areas it isn’t funny, and getting rid of the so-not-really-republican Pataki was a fabulous start. 

Can I ask, seriously and with no sarcasm whatsoever, what causes you to so strongly desire his exit?

Patti
a native of the epicenter of dyfunctional state politics

Assemb. Dov Hikind (D-Brooklyn), an Orthodox Jew, replied by suggesting incestuous couples be recognized along with those of the same sex. “There are certain things that do not change for me unless God sends a message to me,” he said.

This reference to his faith is a rather transparent effort to characterize opponents as out of the mainstream.

O’Donnell, who is gay and a brother of actress Rosie O’Donnell, emphasized that the bill would not compel clergy to perform same-sex marriages.

Clergy are not compelled to perform any marriages at all.  My priest refuses to marry people almost every day.

Why should gay couples have to make ‘arrangements’ - I don’t know what the situation is in NY but certainly the ‘arrangements’ I had made with my partner did not give the same rights as for civilly married couples.
Civil partnerships changed all that, of course. With very little opposition.

Christians want to live in a society founded on principles that are not hostile to their faith.  A society that promotes homosexuality is one hostile to their faith.

“Eliot Spitzer is simply bad for New York and bad for this country.”

As a prosecutor, Spitzer was very bad for the Gambino crime family.

As state attorney general, Spitzer was very bad for mutual fund firms that gave favored clients late-trading privileges enabling those clients to make huge no-brainer profits at the expense of all other mutual fund investors.

Not to mention that Spitzer’s gubernatorial predecessor, George Pataki, was a lackadaisical, ethically challenged machine politician.

New York State government needs two things: an earthquake and a tornado. Spitzer could, if he wants, provide the tornado.

Mr. Griffith,
Civil arrangements can be made for all of these cases.
There have been cases where the “civil arrangements” were not honored.
But, of course, that doesn’t matter in the slightest to you.  Nothing does, except your interpretation of your own, personally chosen, religious belief system and your need to have all others bow down before it.
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tao,

Those are some big words. I guess I should expect as much from a guy who thinks orthodox Christians should be hunted down like dogs and killed (yeah, we read your web forum).

If some civil arrangements aren’t honored, then that perhaps points to problems in civil adjudicatoin. It doesn’t point to a need to legalize gay marriage. Fix the current problem - don’t create a second one.

Patti,

Spitzer has a long history of pursuing anti-growth, anti-capitalist, and pro-statist causes. I’ve been keeping up with him and his antics ever since he was elected AG.

Mr. Griffith,
I guess I should expect as much from a guy who thinks orthodox Christians should be hunted down like dogs and killed (yeah, we read your web forum).
Well, then we know you personally are safe, don’t we?  Since you’ve now clearly proven yourself not to be an orthodox Christian by your own actions.  “Orthodox” Christians tend to obey the Biblical commandment against bearing false witness, especially when their attention has been called to their sin in this regard previously.  By the way, just to be sure that you comprehend the scenario, you’re being accused of deliberately telling a lie.
Now, should you care to defend yourself against that accusation, be so good as to quote the entire comment attributed to me, with a link, and compare it word for word with your deliberately erroneous version so that all may see the record and judge the truth of your pretense of being honest and of cleaning up your own errors when they are pointed out to you. 
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Pretending that there have been no replies to this thread, I opine:

53% of New Yorkers support same-sex marriage.  Spitzer was elected by a considerable margin running with legalization of same-sex marriage as part of his platform. 

Personally, I would love to see same-sex marriage in all fifty states.  I have friends who would benefit tremendously from this, and I don’t see what possible harm it could do to the economy. 

As far as the sacrament of marriage is concerned: As I told a Wesley Biblical professor when we participated in a Mississippi College gay rights panel a couple of months ago, the government can no more grant a marriage certificate that equals the sacrament of matrimony than it can grant a death certificate that allots a place in the world to come.  The government is not in the sacrament business at all and, considering how it barely manages things like Social Security, that’s a very good thing.  It seems very strange to me that we’re supposed to want to privatize government services while at the same time socializing religious sacraments.  That doesn’t strike me as an especially effective tradeoff.

Cheers,

TH

And tao: No offense, but if you used that kind of violent rhetoric, you’re not in a position to be making demands of anybody.

Cheers,

TH

Ah, right, Greg. You mean he’s a liberal Democrat. Wasn’t that why he was elected, and a conservative republican like yourself wouldn’t be one of his natural supporters ?

Tom Head ; maybe you could answer this one. Why are American gays and lesbians so insistent on gay marriage rather than civil partnerships which offer exactly the same legal status, which is what we have in the UK (and colloquially, everyone calls it marriage in any case)
Is it because the US is so much more religious a country - marriage is not primarily viewed as something ‘religious’ here with most people opting for civil ceremonies. And civil marriage is explicitly NOT religious, What matters for most gay people here is equality in society and the law, and that can be introduced without having to ‘officially’ refer to civil partnerships as marriage. In time, civil partnership and civil marriage may be blended, I just don’t know. But it strikes me that we have achieved a lot more here via a pragmatic approach.

MM writes:

Tom Head ; maybe you could answer this one. Why are American gays and lesbians so insistent on gay marriage rather than civil partnerships which offer exactly the same legal status, which is what we have in the UK (and colloquially, everyone calls it marriage in any case)

That’s a good question, MM, and I’m glad you asked.

Because in the United States, marriage operates at two levels of government while civil partnerships operate at just one.  If it were possible to offer a national civil partnerships policy with exactly the same benefits as marriage, and mutually-recognized state policies to match, then I think that would probably function well enough to satisfy everyone.  In fact, entre nous, I think that is probably what will eventually be done in terms of federal law, since a majority of Americans support civil unions but oppose same-sex marriage.

But my feeing is that if we’re going to do that, we may as well just make marriage available to same-sex couples, since the assorted rights and privileges are already on the books for marriage and would have to be added in manually, as it were, for civil partnerships.  Either that, or we could change the wording across the board to civil partnerships regardless of the couple’s gender and let marriage be left to the churches, which I would certainly support.

Cheers,

TH

Sorry.  To insert between the second and third paragraph:

Under current law, a state that legalizes civil unions, even if it offers all of the same benefits as marriage, offers a non-reciprocal policy with no real federal implications.  If same-sex marriage were suddenly recognized by the federal government tomorrow, only Massachusetts and Rhode Island residents would be eligible for it.

Reciprocity is also an issue.  Someone who gets a domestic partnership in California may or may not have a civil union in Vermont or a marriage in Massachusetts.  It makes sense to have a single national standard, and since marriage is what we’re already using for heterosexuals, it would be less messy to simply expand that to include same-sex couples than it would be to create multiple standards that are called various and assorted things.

Cheers,

TH

Thanks for explaining, Tom. Its a lot easier having a relatively unitary state! The US has stronger civil society groupings, but its easier to gain change here.

I think that the CP definition was introduced here in the light of the position of the churches amongst others, although the reality of the legislation is that CP’s are effectively civil marriage in terms of their legal rights and responsibilities - I think that the reality was made clear by Government incorporating within the SOR’s a clause which directs goods and services providers to treat marriage and CP’s in the same way.

Good system.  I wish something like that were possible in the United States, as 90% of the hangup seems to be over the word “marriage” and various people’s sacramental concepts of same.  Maybe it will be in a few years.  Goodness knows I’m tired of arguing about which orifices are sinful to penetrate when the real issue is whether the State actually helps anyone by continuing to restrict partnership privileges to heterosexuals. 

Cheers,

TH

Dear Tom Head, marriage isnt restricted to heterosexuals, homosexuals can get married too, all it takes is a man and a woman. Lets not define people by their sexual desires, but by their sex. God made male and female/man and woman he didnt make adulterers and sodomites.

Mr. Head,
“No offense, but if you used that kind of violent rhetoric, you’re not in a position to be making demands of anybody.”
So the suspicion of having possibly used “violent rhetoric” excuses anything anyone else cares to make up about the speaker?
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Seen-too-Much: “A society that promotes homosexuality is one hostile to their faith.”
IMHO, there’s a difference between “promoting” homosexuality and accepting homosexuality as a variant within God’s good creation. Moreover, do you want a government which aligns itself only with your version of Christian morality? That’s a pretty slippery slope, IMO.

RE: The question of what the “arrangement” is called, “marriage” or “civil partnership.” There is a huge difference: If a government decided that homosexual relationships were a) good for the government (tax benefits, etc.) and b) good for society (stability of relationships, the rearing of children in stable households, support for the community, etc.) it would be logical (and logistically so much easier) to offer those people marriage, with all the rights (and obligations) of the state. And, too, there is the “separate but equal” train of thought—i.e., if I desire marriage (which I do—and thanks for the kind suggestion, Apollos—I’m sure if I married a woman she would be delighted that I had no sexual longing for her…), then it is marriage I desire, not some second-class legal “arrangement.”

Apollos writes:

Dear Tom Head, marriage isnt restricted to heterosexuals, homosexuals can get married too, all it takes is a man and a woman.

Well, yes, and if marriage were limited to same-sex couples you and I could get married, too, but something tells me both of us would be dissatisfied with the arrangement.

I don’t mean to make a 1960s civil rights comparison, but this is a rare case where it fits.  In Loving v. Virginia, the 1967 interracial marriage case, the argument of the State of Virginia—verbatim—was that laws banning interracial marriage are not discriminatory because blacks can marry blacks just like whites can marry whites.  But this ignores the point, which is that the law discriminates against blacks who want to marry whites, and vice versa.  The possibility that blacks and whites would want to marry each other wasn’t really something the government wanted to acknowledge at the time, and in fact when Alabama tried to get the interracial marriage ban written out of its state constitution by referendum in 2000, 42% of residents actually voted to keep it.

Likewise, it’s true that current marriage laws are not discriminatory—any gay man can get married as long as he marries a woman, any lesbian can get married as long as she marries a man—but that doesn’t really address the crux of the issue, which is whether it really helps anyone to have it so that men can’t marry other men, or women can’t marry other women.  It’s obviously a pretty big inconvenience for folks if we don’t allow same-sex marriage, so the issue to me becomes why the government keeps the limit intact, given that.  Eventually I suspect it won’t because the limit doesn’t really seem to serve any useful purpose. 

Cheers,

TH

(“are not discriminatory” is not exactly what I meant—“are not discriminatory under the terms U.S. marriage has traditionally operated under” would be more accurate.  Cheers, TH)

Eliot Spitzer did a lot of good as AG of NY.  He knew the excesses of Wall Street and tried to correct many of them, for which he should be thanked, as he should be thanked for setting a high standard for state AGs.  He also made some mistakes that I don’t know he either recognizes or admits.

His sponsoring and fighting vigorously for legislation to promote homosexuality and to legitimize homosexual marriage and related positions (as opposed to protecting any from violence) are reasons he would not be viable as a presidential candidate.  He is clueless about religious sensibilities and theological motivations (as opposed to what most media think they know about religion).  Like other NY urban/NYC politicians, he has dedicated his career to NY only and, thus far anyway, he is really out of his element outside of it.  He could learn a lot by talking to the most respected orthodox (little o, although some big Os might be included) Jewish and Christian theologians he could find.  Assisting the Ambassador to the Vatican or conversing in a sustained way with the best and brightest of papal nuncios or Roman Bishops in this country might be instructive, if he were ever so inclined.  But I have never seen evidence that he would ever be so inclined.  For similar reasons, Michael Bloomberg, Rudolf Guilliani and Hilary Clinton, in all their apparent (by NY’s ironic standards) diversity, are not electable to the US presidency either.  NY and much of the northeast has a way colloquializing many of their representatives so that the country will not benefit from their capabilities, at least in office above a NY rep to the US Senate. 

Bloomberg’s recognition that something is profoundly awry with NY politics caused him to switch parties, twice, until his present position of becoming an Independent, a sign that northeastern political institutions are crumbling and/or ineffective.  Whether he could outspend the remains of the national Democratic and Republican Parties elsewhere in the country may remain to be seen. 

While each of these individuals has done many good things for NY, their concessions to and homage to a social fringe deeply estranges them from most of the country.  Their ignorance of, indifference to or disagreements with religion, and specifically, theological reasons for political stances, is their individual and collective, unacknowledged achilles heal.  This estrangement, its attendant myopia and occasional arrogance of many northeastern politicians is a sad thing to behold given the role of the northeast in the country’s earlier history.  It is an internal weakness of our country that may take a long time to overcome and our vulnerabilities in the meantime because of it are quite disturbing.

Seen Too Much writes:

His sponsoring and fighting vigorously for legislation to promote homosexuality and to legitimize homosexual marriage and related positions (as opposed to protecting any from violence) are reasons he would not be viable as a presidential candidate.

There was a time when one would have said the same thing about Rudy Giuliani, and yet right now he’s the frontrunner in the Republican primaries, never mind the general election.

My prediction is that in ten years, which is the soonest I would expect Spitzer to even consider running for president (if in fact he has any plans to do that, and I doubt he does), his views will be considered mainstream in the Democratic Party and will not be seen as unusual enough to hurt him in a general election.  Regardless, he is already representing the majority of his own constituents—53% of New Yorkers support same-sex marriage, and elected him by a landslide margin as someone who vowed to make them legal in the state.

Cheers,

TH