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Paterson Wants Public Debates on Gay Marriage

April 9, 2009 by savvyplanners.com 

By Jeremy W. Peters, via NYtimes.com

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson has been saying that a bill legalizing same-sex marriage should come to a vote in the State Senate even if the measure does not have enough support to pass.

But is this really a good thing for gay rights advocates, a constituency that Mr. Paterson has solidly supported for most of his political career?

Mr. Paterson’s logic, which he explained in separate radio interviews on Thursday morning, is that the public deserves to see where their elected officials stand on an issue as sensitive as same-sex marriage. The bill should be debated on the Senate floor, senators should be forced to take a public position on it, and they should vote it up or down, he said.

“I’m going to put the bill out and just let people fight it out,” Mr. Paterson said in an appearance on the Buffalo station WGR-AM (550). “I would like to see the Legislature just debate the bills that people think are controversial.”

In an earlier appearance on WHAM-AM (1180), Mr. Paterson did not seem concerned that the bill could lose. “If it loses, it loses,” he said. “And let the parties on both sides have their say.”

Mr. Paterson added that he believed same-sex marriage would ultimately become law in New York. “Inevitably, the inertia is that the public will accept this,” he said.

But a loss could result in another devastating blow to gay rights advocates, who are still stinging from their defeat in California when voters approved a ballot initiative in November restricting marriage to heterosexual couples.

A loss in New York could be especially harmful to the national gay rights movement because of the state’s reputation as a forerunner on liberal social issues. Recent developments in states like Iowa, where the State Supreme Court there last week ruled same-sex couples could wed, and Vermont, which on Tuesday overrode a governor’s veto of a same-sex marriage bill, have been heartening to gay activists. But a legal or political victory in a state as large as New York would carry much more symbolic weight.

Advocates who are fighting to legalize marriage for gay couples in New York said they only want the bill to come to a vote in the Senate if its passage is assured. (A same-sex marriage bill passed the Assembly in 2007 and is expected to pass again this year.)

Additionally, the Democratic leader of the Senate, Malcolm A. Smith, has said he would bring the bill to the floor only if, or when, it had enough support to become law. Currently not enough Senate Democrats have said they would support the bill, leaving the decision essentially in the hands of a few Republican swing votes.

“Why would you want people to vote on something that you knew wasn’t going to get passed,” said Alan Van Capelle, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, which is lobbying lawmakers in Albany to approve a same-sex marriage bill this year. “We’re not interested in making statements.”

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