Why should the NY GOP, after winning control of the senate from the pro-gay marriage Dem leadership, vote at all?
New York state's Republican senators were huddled on Friday to discuss a bill to legalize same sex marriage with the fate of the measure depending on one more Republican vote.
... But with lawmakers set to break for summer recess on Monday, and with Republicans in the majority in the state Senate, it remained unclear if the measure would even be allowed to come to a vote. -- Reuters
At this point, it's uncertain, as the Times Union reports:
Senate Republicans continued to refuse to say whether they will bring a bill legalizing same-sex marriages to a floor vote, drawing charges they are delaying action for political reasons.
... On top of personal misgivings -- many of which are rooted in religion -- Sen. John DeFrancisco of Syracuse said he was urging cohesion among Republican members because a vote might hurt their razor-thin 32-30 majority. He said Bloomberg's optimism was "maybe wishful thinking."
... Opponents and supporters remained at the Capitol, but the Rev. Jason McGuire, a traditional marriage lobbyist, interpreted the delay positively.
"I think it's a good sign. I think they're seriously considering the short-term political implications but also the long-term societal implications of same-sex marriage in the state of New York," he said.
The Christian Post reports:
NEW YORK - Hispanic ministers representing over 150 churches in New York rallied Thursday against the state's gay marriage bill, which is one vote short of being legalized in the New York Senate.
Supporters of New York Hispanic Clergy Organization gathered outside the office of Bronx Sen. Ruben Diaz to protest the gay marriage legislation and affirm their strong support for Diaz, the only Democrat state senator who will vote no on the bill. The Rev. Diaz, who is a Pentecostal minister, is the president of the Christian Hispanic group.
Diaz "has received many threats to his life and also negative comments towards his views. We say to those who have opposed, that we are united by our creed, belief, and he is not alone," said the Rev. Dr. Andy Torres, a vice president of NY Hispanic Clergy Organization.
... The Rev. Joel M. Bauza, public relations director of New York Hispanic Clergy Organization and senior pastor of Calvary Church in Bronx, told The Christian Post that around 50-70 ministers and supporters joined the rally but they actually represent hundreds of thousands of church members around the state.
"This is only a portion of what we're capable of," he said.
If you only make four calls today, call these four undecided Senators in New York and ask them to protect marriage as between one man and one woman!
Thank you, and please invite your friends now to do the same!
There is particular uncertainty about adoption agencies, as this New York Sun article makes clear:
As the question of same-gender marriage in New York goes down to the wire at Albany, experts on the legal impact of the changes being sought are warning that religious exemptions in Governor Cuomo’s bill have fallen far short of what the religious community had been praying for.
Professor Wilson’s letter is significant not only because of her distinction in the field but because the issues she is raising are the point at which a number of senators are on tenterhooks. Ms. Wilson is one of six law professors or experts who signed a May 17 letter to the majority leader of the Senate, Dean Skelos, warning that “conflicts between same-sex marriage and religious conscience will be both certain and considerable if adequate protections are not provided.”
... [Their] warning comes as both Mr. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg have been orchestrating what the Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, has called a stampede to get the legislation passed this session. The religious community has for several years been seeking a formal hearing at which these issues could be addressed, but it was curtly spurned in the Assembly by the speaker, Sheldon Silver, in 2007, and no hearings have been held in either chamber since then.
The New York Times is reporting on the "slipping" support for the bill among New York Senators who take the religious liberty of organizations and individuals seriously:
A senior Republican lawmaker from the Hudson Valley, seeking to balance religious liberty and gay rights, is emerging as a pivotal voice in the State Senate as Republicans debate whether to allow a vote on the legalization of same-sex marriage, lawmakers and advocates for the bill said on Thursday.
The lawmaker, Stephen M. Saland, 67, of Poughkeepsie, represents a traditionally Republican but increasingly diverse district, and advocates of same-sex marriage have long considered him a potential vote for gay marriage, even though he voted against the measure two years ago. But Mr. Saland, a practicing lawyer, is said to be concerned about the scope and the depth of protections for religious organizations in the marriage bill.
...Some potential votes for same-sex marriage appeared to be slipping away on Thursday. Greg Ball, a Republican senator from the Hudson Valley who had been heavily lobbied by advocates for the bill and Republican donors who support same-sex marriage, called Mr. Cuomo’s bill “an affront to religious organizations” lacking broad enough protections for religious institutions.
A minimum for serious protection would be to acknowledge and observe New York's 3-day rule for legislative language.
Both sides of this debate are actively lobbying New York lawmakers, though not all of them are being cordially received, as this New York Times reporter makes clear:
Some lawmakers have been quite explicit about their frustration with some opponents of same-sex marriage. Senator Diane J. Savino, Democrat of Staten Island, taped a handwritten sign outside her legislative office this week that said, “Bigots and homophobes please put your literature here,” with an arrow pointing to a box lid on the ground.
Be sure to tune into CNN this morning at around 9:40AM EST to watch David Tyree discuss his video for marriage which is making headlines across the country (and internationally, as well)!
Paul Stanley of the Christian Post gets NOM Chairman Maggie Gallagher's thoughts about what's happening in the empire state:
“It’s pretty clear the Republican majority in the Senate recognizes they have a real problem,” said Gallagher, NOM’s chairman and co-founder. “I don’t understand why Senate Republicans need to carry the Governor’s water – especially when they have nothing to gain.”
Gallagher said the issue of same-sex marriage is a low priority for most New Yorkers. She feels the legislature should be focusing on property tax relief and rent regulation – two issues she believes are more important to the majority of citizens.
“The only ones pushing the Senate vote are gay advocates or those who have something to gain from it – notably Michael Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo,” said Gallagher. “If the legislature really wanted to know where the people stood on same-sex marriage, they should put it to a vote of the people. That way they can get back to working on more pressing issues.”
[For our ongoing live coverage of the fight to protect marriage in New York, click here and scroll down!]
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Related on the NOM blog: "Tyree Video on Marriage Going Viral!"
Since David Tyree's video for marriage went viral, he's asked his friends on twitter for support and prayers (as ESPN observed):
We're happy to see that he's receiving them in droves!
Many of you have told us you stand with David and admire his courage, now go tell him too!
Robin Wilson, professor of law at Washington and Lee University and co-editor of the book “Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Liberty: Emerging Conflicts” writes in the New York Sun:
Governor Cuomo said yesterday he would deliver a marriage equality bill identical to 2009’s failed attempt, “no ifs, ands or buts” about it. Who is it that he is kidding?
Mr. Cuomo’s bill vastly improves the ability of religious communities or agencies of religious organizations to avoid needless clashes over same-sex marriage. But, inexplicably, it fails to offer needed protections to ordinary individuals who also desire for religious reasons to step aside from facilitating same-sex marriages.
... Bakers, photographers, seamstresses, florists and bed-and-breakfast owners who, for religious reasons prefer to step aside from celebrating or facilitating same-sex marriages may be subject to suit under New York’s Human Rights Act. That law authorizes compensatory damages and, for housing discrimination, punitive damages and civil fines too.
Michael Benjamin is a former New York State Assemblyman turned political commentator, analyst and blogger. He writes about this most recent effort to redefine marriage:
I am a supporter of traditional marriage between a man and a woman. In recent years, with the advent of the “Me Generation” and judicial activism, the cultural élite have relentlessly pursued unfettered individual choice without regard for tradition, the needs of children or nature itself. In 2009, we saw same-sex marriage bills defeated in both the New York and New Jersey State Senates. And in 2010, we saw the successful repeal and referenda efforts across the nation.
While in the Assembly, I fought for tradition when I opposed the marriage equality act. I voted against this bill not only to preserve the rich tradition of marriage but because codifying same-sex marriage would set up a vast and unnecessary legal conflict between sexual and religious liberty.
The Governor’s program bill does not preserve religious freedom...
Moving right along!
In Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. US Department of Health (United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit)
"ORDER entered by Sandra L. Lynch, Chief Appellate Judge. The motion of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the United States House of Representatives ("the House") to intervene as a party appellant is granted."
More details once we see the press commenting on this breaking news.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Dear Marriage Supporter,
As I write, the New York Times is reporting that the New York Senate is just one vote shy of passing gay marriage.
Marriage hangs in the balance. As I write, tens of thousands of you who live in New York have picked up the phone, or gone to NOM's action center to send an email to your state senator. Don't stop now. Act this second, to prevent same-sex marriage from coming to New York without a vote of the people!
When I met with Republican leaders in New York, they asked me, "Would you accept a referendum and then let the legislature do what the people decided?" Yes, I told them. Yes! Because I know that the majority of New Yorkers, when they hear both sides, will vote to protect marriage.
Andrew Cuomo has tacked on some religious-liberty language to try to pick off GOP votes.
He's done it so late in the day that there's little time for legal experts to determine the actual effect of the language, but one thing is certain: This won't protect parents who don't want their children taught that gay marriage is a fundamental civil right—that language is right there in the bill.
As I write, more than a hundred pastors have gathered on the steps of City Hall, chanting, "Let the People Vote!" Thanks to Bishop Henry Jackson and Bishop Joseph Mattera for speaking truth to power.
Here's NOM's new video of another pastor, Rev. William Owens, who was in New York on May 28, speaking to a group of pastors in the Church of God in Christ.
"I did not march one step for civil rights so that a man could marry a man!" Rev. Owens, who marched with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., said to thunderous applause.
News coverage, from our point of view, has been generally speaking dreadful. The New York Daily News is considered a mainstream newspaper. But it actually did a profile of NOM that begins with this sentence:
"A shadowy group run by religious fundamentalists is bankrolling a pitched crusade against same-sex marriage in New York."
The so-called reporter goes on to say,
Secretive and flush with cash, the National Organization for Marriage is igniting a culture war as it battles Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg in their campaign to legalize gay wedlock.
"If marriage is redefined, then New York schools will soon be teaching that it's just as good for Jimmy to grow up and marry Johnny as it is to marry Mary," says the group's $172,100-a-year president, Brian Brown.
He warned of dire consequences if Albany, which nixed same-sex nuptials in 2009, reverses course.
Based in Princeton, N.J., and Washington D.C., the tax-exempt group was founded in 2007 to defend traditional heterosexual marriage.
Since then, its treasury has grown from $637,000 to $8.5 million in 2009 as it attacked same-sex unions across the country. In the last 18 months, donations have swollen to more than $13 million, sources say.
Sources? I believe I told that to the reporter when he called.
It's so over the top, it would be hysterical—if it were not a sign of our times.
(More news you have not been told: France this week voted again to reject same-sex marriage, 293 to 222. "We are against homophobia but we do not want to alter the image and function of marriage in the collective subconscious," said UMP lawmaker Michel Diefenbacher.)
If this bill passes the New York legislature, it will only be after an incredible push by Democratic leaders, Andrew Cuomo, and Mayor Bloomberg, aided and abetted by Big Media, Big Hollywood, and Madison Avenue—and one or two big GOP donors too.
But in the end it is the Republican leadership's decision to take up this bill in the Senate which is responsible for putting New York through this fight.
On Monday, in the first New Hampshire debate, five of the seven GOP candidates came out for a constitutional amendment to protect marriage. They know what the Republicans think on this issue—and they know right from wrong.
There is no need for the Senate to vote on marriage in the middle of a budget crash, just two years after it already rejected same-sex marriage. If the Senate does so this week it is purely a result of a political calculation on the part of GOP leadership that the political fallout will be less from voting than from not voting. It reflects a political judgment that you and I know is wrong—in both senses.
When I read the comments on RubenDiaz.com, I can't help but suspect that even many gay-marriage advocates know it's wrong.
Who would write stuff like this?
"Despicable spic. You're a pig. A moronic believer in religious drivel who is far too stupid to comprehend anything. Let's hope you come down with typhoid in the next few days. Maybe you should pray to Jesus. That's the trouble with democracies. They give a voice to @#$&! heads like you and your ignorant, poverty stricken followers."
Unbelievable! It was signed by a D.J. Fontana. (I'm sure that's some unknown guy throwing ugly hate darts, and not the famous drummer by the same name.)
2011 and 2012, and beyond, will give us the chance to help brave Democrats like Sen. Rev. Rubén Díaz and to show Republican elites that they need to listen to the people. I promise you: We will not give up this fight! NOM pledged at least $1 million to help educate New Yorkers on how their representatives vote on this issue. With your help and God's, we will stand by our word.
As Archbishop Timothy P. Dolan put it so eloquently this week, "God, not Albany, has settled the definition of marriage a long time ago."
It's fourth down and long in the fourth quarter in the fight for marriage in New York. But some amazing people are standing up for God's truth about marriage.
One of the people who stood on the steps of City Hall yesterday was David Tyree.
If you are a football fan like me, you may recognize him as the New York Giants' wide receiver who caught the key pass that lead the Giants to a cliffhanging last-minute victory in the 2008 Super Bowl—the "catch of the decade," as it's called.
When Maggie found out he was at the press conference, she called him up. He's an incredible man, as this excerpt from Maggie's syndicated column makes clear. Maggie writes:
Just a few weeks after Toronto sportscaster Damian Goddard lost his job by tweeting to his personal Twitter list of 175 people that he supports marriage as the union of husband and wife, David Tyree turned up on the steps of City Hall, joining more than 125 pastors (plus some rabbis)—black, white, Hispanic—who came to rebut Mayor Bloomberg's call to pass a gay marriage bill.
Bishop Joseph Materra of Brooklyn, who organized the press conference, told me he warned David Tyree that a public stance in favor of traditional views of marriage could be costly.
David Tyree laughed when I asked him today, a few hours after the press conference, if it was true.
"Yes," he said, but David did not sound worried. "I'm not the average guy; I don't have much desire in my life to be liked by everybody. My desire is to use my life and my voice and any platform I'm given to serve God. There's only one person I am going to be judged by in the end."
Tyree is married now, the father of five (with another on the way). He didn't always live that life. Growing up in a divorced home, even though his mother and his father were both in his life, he felt the ache so many children of divorce feel. "Only a man can teach you how to be a man, and only a woman can teach you how to be a woman," he told me. "When your father is not in your home, you look to TV to teach you how to be a man. And the things society tells you—sexual conquest and economic prowess—lead to an unfulfilled life." He's grateful he's escaped that life and feels a particular obligation to speak now for marriage.
He is not a political guy, he tells me. He came forward in part in response to the news that his former teammate Michael Strahan had come out for gay marriage. "I love the guy, he's a great teammate," Tyree told me, "But many good people are quietly on the side of marriage, and it can get discouraging if no one speaks up. It's deeply disturbing for government to try to redefine something that didn't originate with man. That's my heart's cry, the reason I did this."
Children long for a mom and a dad.
But as Tyree said in the City Action Coalition press release:."I believe in marriage as God originally intended, between one man and one woman. My position may not be popular in some circles, but I care more about marriage and family than my reputation."
Brave man. It says a lot for where we are headed that standing for marriage as it has been known throughout all of human history could conceivably win you a bad reputation in any circle.
In New York, the push for gay marriage is incredible; it's the eleventh hour, the last chance for New Yorkers who care about our marriage tradition to speak up.
But then David Tyree's a guy who is good to have in your corner in the closing minutes of the fourth quarter.
David Tyree graciously agreed to do a video interview with NOM and it's going viral: ESPN, TMZ, Drudge Report, NY Daily News, CNN, the list keeps growing. Take a minute to watch it and share it with your friends.
Amazing testimony from a good and brave man. I especially love the shout out at the end to a high school boy who might be getting harassed for opposing gay marriage. Share it with your high school teens.
Kudos and gratitude to him, and to Bishop Joseph Materra, City Action Coalition, Rev. Jason Maguire, and all the other pastors speaking truth, timeless truth, to the passing powers that be.
Speaking of truth, I can't resist clueing you in on a weird little news story that hit the internet this week.
You've probably never heard of Dr. Paula Brooks, but we have. As the editor of a gay blog called "Lez Get Real" she was a particularly virulent critic of NOM's, regularly accusing us of lies. She even wrote Maggie personally to call her a liar, bigot, etc.
So we were as surprised as anyone to wake up this morning and find out Dr. Paula Brooks doesn't exist. "She" is really a married white guy from Ohio with a wife who decided to pretend to be a lesbian because he didn't think anyone would take his views seriously unless he faked being a lesbian.
To read the tale of how he was outed, after helping NPR discredit another blogger on his site who was called the "Gay Girl in Damascus" (who also turned out to be, well... not gay, not a girl, and not in Damascus) check out: "Just Two Dudes Pretending to be Lesbians, Trying to Change the World."
I'm not sure what to make of this story except that, coming as it did this week with the hard, long slog in New York, maybe it's just a little reminder: In the end truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred.
God bless and keep you always!
Brian S. Brown
President
National Organization for Marriage
P.S. NOM seeks to be your voice for your values. And we can't do that without your help! The fight for marriage is urgent and every dollar you can give will make a difference. Whether you can give $25 or $250, or perhaps a monthly donation of just $10, know that you will be a part of the great battles—and the great victories!—still to come. Please help us defend marriage for your children, your grandchildren, and this great country.
