Lt. Governor David Paterson, who will assume the responsibilities of governor of New York on Monday, March 17, is viewed by gay and trans activists alike as the staunchest of supporters for the LGBT community. Paterson will be the first African-American and legally blind governor of the state.
“He has been there in every critical fight over the last two decades,” said Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, naming hate-crimes legislation introduced in 1987 and passed in 2000, the Sexual Orientation Nondiscrimination Act (SONDA) passed in 2002, and the ongoing fight to legalize same-sex marriage.
Though SONDA was not trans-inclusive, transgender activist Melissa Sklarz, director of New York Trans Rights Organization (NYTRO), said Paterson, who was the state senate minority leader at the time, labored to find a route for protecting trans people.
“When we tried to change the SONDA law in 2002, David Paterson was hugely supportive of us,” Sklarz said. More generally, she added that Paterson’s own personal struggles allow him to empathize with those who are sometimes considered outsiders. “He knows what it’s like to overcome adversity. He knows what it’s like when people are judged negatively at first impression,” she said.
Foreman noted the political reality of getting SONDA passed was that it took 31 years, and the bill the state Assembly advanced was not trans-inclusive. “We had many anguished meetings,” said Foreman, who was executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda at the time. “As minority leader of the senate, there was only so much [Paterson] could do. Getting SONDA through the Republican senate and signed by a Republican governor was a huge lift.”
Paterson himself counted passing SONDA and hate crimes as two of his biggest accomplishments in a 2006 interview with this reporter. Paterson, who represented Harlem in the state senate from 1987 to 2006, refused to pass the hate-crimes bill without protections for gays and lesbians.
“Writing the first hate crimes bill in the state, with an opportunity pass it in 1987, and turning my back on it because it didn’t include sexual orientation was another thing I was really proud of,” then Sen. Paterson said in August 2006. “I knew it was the right thing to do, and it was the first big test of right versus personal enhancement where I did the right thing.”
Paterson was also an early supporter of same-sex marriage, going on record as early as 1994. According to LGBT activist and Democratic political consultant Ethan Geto, he took a critical part in lobbying for passage of Gov. Spitzer’s marriage equality bill in the New York State assembly last year.
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