New York lawmakers rejected a bill that would have allowed same-sex marriage last week, a stunning outcome in a state that was the site of one of the gay-rights movement’s defining moments four decades ago.
Opponents of gay marriage said it was a huge victory that could influence votes elsewhere.
“It’s just a huge win,” said Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, a nonprofit group whose stated mission is to “protect marriage.” “It’s going to help cement defeat for gay marriage in New Jersey, and I think it’s going to get a whole bunch of politicians in New Hampshire who voted for gay marriage this year pretty nervous when they come up for election.”
So far this year, Maine voters rejected a measure and last year California voters rescinded their law. The New Jersey Senate was scheduled to consider a bill to legalize gay marriage this week.
Supporters of same-sex marriage, however, point to Vermont and New Hampshire, where lawmakers adopted gay-marriage bills this year, while the city council in Washington, D.C., is expected to legalize gay marriage next month.
Iowa’s Supreme Court also recognized gay marriage this year. Gay marriage was already legal in Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Richard Socarides, who was former President Bill Clinton’s senior adviser on gay-rights issues, called New York “clearly the biggest prize in this effort.”
“Not only will it affect a lot of people because New York is a big state,” he said, “but symbolically, New York is the country’s leader in finance, the arts and culture. It’s a bellwether for the country.”
Across the Hudson River, New Jersey was watching.
“Here in New Jersey, many of the legislators would rather not vote on it,” said Gregory Quinlan, of New Jersey Family First, which opposes gay marriage.
He said New York’s action bolsters his group’s position.
But Steven Goldstein, CEO of Garden State Equality, countered that the demographics of New York and New Jersey are very different.
“If Democrats in New Jersey don’t lead the way, as they promised, to pass marriage equality in 2009, there could be a mutiny against the New Jersey Democratic Party the likes of which this state has never seen,” he said.
Last Wednesday, New York’s bill was defeated 38-24 in the Senate led by liberal New York City Democrats holding a single-seat majority. It was the last hurdle for passage for the measure passed three times by the Democrat-led Assembly and strongly pushed by Democratic Gov. David Paterson.
Evan Wolfson, director of the national gay-rights group Freedom to Marry, said the vote stung. He and other national advocates blamed the fractured dynamics of the New York Senate, where Democrats won a slim majority this year after a half-century of Republican control, only to face defections from their ranks and a Republican-dominated coup that gridlocked the chamber this summer.
The Senate’s Republicans who were expected to support the measure might have been scared off as the state’s conservative party reasserted its power in Republican politics.
New York City was the site of the 1969 Stonewall Inn riots, considered the birth of the modern gay-rights movement. The largest U.S. city is more liberal than other areas of the state.