Following one of the most dramatic and emotional discourses thus far in the gay marriage debate, the New York Senate voted 24 to 38 Dec. 2 to reject a bill guaranteeing equal marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The bill, which Democratic Gov. David Paterson was expected to sign right away, would have made New York – the third largest populated state in the country – the sixth state to provide equal marriage rights to gay couples.

Opponents of the measure – with one exception – sat silently throughout more than two hours of discourse about the bill, while 18 Democrats – many of them African Americans and Jews – stood to urge support for the bill.

The bill’s sponsor, openly gay Sen. Tom Duane, in closing debate on the measure, sighed heavily and acknowledged the outcome of the vote was still uncertain. The bill needed 32 votes to pass and, while the Senate generally takes up bills only after the leadership knows it has the votes to pass, the marriage bill was an exception. No one – given 32 Democrats and 30 Republicans in the chamber – knew what the result would be.

“We have work to do in New York, and elsewhere,” said Marty Rouse, national field director for the Human Rights Campaign, which operated phone banks for constituents to call their senators on the issue. “We’re getting closer to equality, but we’re not there yet.”

The chamber was silent when the vote was announced just before 3 p.m. Wednesday.

The debate preceding the vote included numerous African-American senators emphasizing how similar arguments against gay marriage parallel arguments made decades ago against interracial marriage. It included many vigorous statements that the law would not affect religious freedoms.

And it included many tips of the proverbial hat to Sen. Duane and his partner in life Louis Webre.

“In my family and culture, especially as it relates to my religion, it has always been considered that, if you were living together and not officially married, you were considered living in sin,” said Sen. Velmanette Montgomery, an African-American Democrat from Brooklyn. “So, for those of us who believe in that religious tenet, the reason why to support same-sex marriage is that we do not want them to live in sin.”

By Lisa Keen
From www.pridesource.com

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