Same-Sex Marriage in New York
posted by Courtney Joslin
2009 was a big year for same-sex marriage. In 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court became the first state high court to issue a unanimous opinion in favor of marriage equality for same-sex couples. 2009 was also the year in which a U.S. jurisdiction (well, it turned out to be jurisdictions) achieved marriage equality legislatively. Vermont was the first such jurisdiction, followed by New Hampshire, Maine, and then DC. (Ultimately, however, the Maine legislation was repealed by voter referendum.) Although a number of states — including Delaware, Hawaii, and Illinois — have enacted civil union legislation since then, no additional states have been added to the marriage equality list.
But that might change soon; New York might join the list in the near future. Many expected New York to approve same-sex marriage legislation in 2009, but that did not come to pass. This time around, the legislation has support from a broad range of sources. Last week, the New York Times reported that the same-sex marriage campaign in New York is receiving “the bulk of their money” from “a group of conservative financiers and wealthy donors to the Republican Party.” There is also support from New York political leaders, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Another source of support is the organized Bar. A press conference was held today in New York by various bar associations that support marriage equality. The groups include the New York State Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, along with a number of other New York state and local bar associations. The list of supporters also comprises a wide array of minority bar associations, including the Asian American Bar Association of New York, the Dominican Bar Association, the Hispanic National Bar Association, the Muslim Bar Association of New York, the Puerto Rican Bar Association, the South Asian Bar Association of New York, and the Women’s Bar Association of the State of New York.
Last year, in August 2010, the American Bar Association likewise took a position in support of marriage equality. The resolution, which was approved overwhelmingly by the ABA House of Delegates, provides that the ABA urges states to “eliminate all of their legal barriers to civil marriage between two persons of the same sex who are otherwise eligible to marry.”
A recent poll reported that 58% percent of New Yorkers support marriage equality for same-sex couples.
May 17, 2011 at 1:06 pm
Posted in: Civil Rights, Current Events, Family Law, LGBT, Politics, Uncategorized
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Responses (3)
Jim Maloney - May 18, 2011 at 12:03 pm
My comments, written seven years ago, are accessible via the link from my name, above. Nothing has changed my mind about any of my comments in those seven years (although that’s nearly 15% of the century that I mention during which “the pot has been simmering”).
M.T. Nest - May 19, 2011 at 5:26 pm
No need to follow the link. I can tell from the tone of your post (“I don’t change my mind in seven years.”) that you are a conservative, anti-gay, DOMA-supoprter type.
Jim Maloney - May 20, 2011 at 9:03 am
WHY I SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE (AN EX-PARAMEDIC’S VIEW)
From 1987 to 1995, during the most devastating years of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, I worked as a paramedic for Saint Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan, serving primarily the neighborhoods of Greenwich Village and Chelsea. During that time I responded to huge numbers of calls involving AIDS patients, many times in apartments where one partner in a gay couple had the disease and the other did not. In those instances, I witnessed firsthand a degree of caring, devotion and loyalty, by one human being to another, that could serve as an example to many a heterosexual couple challenged by such things as terminal illness or other major life stressors. . . [READ MORE]
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