By Michael Boyajian
Marriage Equality New York is hosting a party to thank their District Coordinators for their support in lobbying state senators in their districts for the recent drive to legalize same sex marriage in New York. I was a District Coordinator and considered a straight ally and assigned to Senator Saland. I tried to convince him of our view point but he seemed to have objections on religious grounds. MENY is seeking civil marriage ceremonies not religious ones by the way.
The party will be at the Central Park West apartment of Betsy Malcolm. I am hoping Michael Sabatino and Robert Voorheis will be attending. They are the poster boys of the same sex marriage movement. Their story begins as choir singers along with Michael’s late mother at the local Catholic church. One day Michael and Robert get married out of state and when they returned they are asked to leave the choir. So to make a long story short Michael, Robert and Michael’s elderly mom, all lifelong Catholics, are now singing for the local Episcopalian choir.
Getting back to Senator Saland, I was watching a story on Ted Olson’s court battle to legalize same sex marriage and it dawned on me that we should reach out to Republicans in the senate. I was a Republican in another lifetime and could pick up the phone and call high level party officials with ease. The thought was further enhanced by the fact that it looked like the senate Democrats would be coming up just a few votes short.
So I picked up the phone and called Republican John Faso. We talked about the issue and he went so far as to suggest that we move towards civil unions plus which is the system in place in France. I decided to put him directly in contact with Cathy Marino-Thomas of MENY. She later told me that she liked some of his ideas and it gave her ideas as well. This was the initial bridge between MENY and the Republicans.
Continuing along this path I contacted Senator Saland’s colleague Republican Assemblyman Joel Miller who voted for us in the assembly and asked him to come to the Beahive in Beacon and speak on the issue. At first no one was showing up then we realized that the front door had become locked so we unlocked it and before you knew it we had a full room and Assemblyman Joel Miller. In the end he pledged to lobby his GOP allies to support the initiative.
The initial lack of people due to the locked door gave me a frightening flashback at that time to MENY’s first event in the Hudson Valley at Riverside Park in Beacon. We had launched a massive publicity campaign to promote the event but in the end it was just seven of us MENY people in the middle of an empty park joined by just two other couples. Quite a let down, especially with the New York Court of Appeals loss at the time.
To solace us, fellow supporters, the children of Woodstock at the Beacon Sloop Club took us out for a long sail on their sloop the Woodie Guthrie. The sail calmed our nerves and led us to a bull session where it was decided that rather than create our own festivals we would just have a table at the festivals of other organizations like Pete Seeger’s group Clearwater who were already established in the region.
As time passed we were dismayed by California but enlivened by gains in New England. The vote in the New York senate was fast approaching. The overwhelmingly Democratic assembly had already voted in favor of the measure and Governor Paterson vowed to sign it into law. We were hoping that the Governor would flex some muscle and do some LBJ style arm twisting to bring in votes in the senate. But we learned later that senate Democrats had sidelined him because of his approval ratings.
On the day of the vote Sabatino, Voorheis and Ron Zacchi and Rob Lassegue of MENY among others were in the senate chamber. They were taking photographs of the proceedings on their mobile devices and broadcasting things as they developed over Facebook. So the little known workings of the senate were on full display before the Facebook nation minute by minute.
The proceedings lasted most of the day and it was looking good to those at the chamber and on Facebook. But then the votes started to be counted and the Democrats came up shorter than expected causing the Republicans who vowed to deliver three votes that would push the measure over the finish line if the Democrats hit their own number to hold back their votes. It was another crash and burn.
And that leads us back to the MENY party. Volunteers will be thanked and word circulated that we would be challenging those who did not support us at the ballot box this year. The gay community has done some heavy lifting for Democrats over the years and can easily bring pressure there and also have the money to fund races against Republican foes in marginally Republican senate districts.
But it all makes you wonder what all the fuss is about. It is self evident to most everyone that the nation was founded on the bedrock of equality and that gays are being treated unfairly. The City Bar Association reports that there are 1,300 rights that married straight couples have that gay couples do not have.
The MENY party will conclude with a well appreciated pep talk from Senate Democrat Eric Schneiderman and a discussion of strategies and even options like a restive one suggested by blogger Howard Gruabard who says that perhaps we should follow the Vermont model and go for civil unions plus first and then marriage later.
But there is more to the story. It is about love. When you are in love with someone you want to spend the rest of your life together in marital communion and you want that marriage to begin as soon as possible. Yet some have warped marriage into nothing more than a union of procreation. My wife and I have been married twenty four years and have no children, most of our circle of married friends are childless as were the father of the nation George Washington and his wife Martha. So why are we all allowed to marry and gays not allowed? That is the question that will be answered in New York and elsewhere this year when gays pour out of the pubs and into the streets.
End