After New York's
highest court rejected marriage equality Thursday
morning, advocates for same-sex marriage called upon the
state legislature to pass a law granting the right to
marry to gay and lesbian couples. Calling the court of
appeals' 4-2 decision to uphold the state's ban on
same-sex marriage "sad," attorneys, gay-rights activists,
political leaders, and some of the 44 plaintiff couples
in the four cases before the court said that marriage
equality is now up to legislators in Albany, the state
capital, to provide.
"The court made it clear that it is up to the
state legislature to address the inequality in our
marriage law," New York city council speaker Christine
Quinn, who is gay, said in a statement. "It is
time now for Albany to act, and to act quickly, to provide
equal protection for all New Yorkers. I call on state
lawmakers to put civil rights before politics.
Together with other elected officials and the LGBT
community, I will lobby the assembly, the senate, and the
governor to ensure our laws treat all people equally."
Mayor Bloomberg, who appealed a lower-court
ruling in favor of marriage equality but has since
said he would work to change state law to allow
same-sex marriage, also addressed the court of appeals'
decision at a press conference today. "I will endorse
a campaign to change the law," Bloomberg said. "But
the court’s decision today just reaffirmed what
the lawyers for both the state and the city have long
believed was the existing law. The courts said it’s
not unconstitutional to have a law that determines who
can marry who. And so now what we have to do, if you
believe that marriage should be between people if they want
to do it, you go to the legislature. And I’ve said I
would do that."
He added that he's "talked to some people in the
gay community that want to get the laws changed, and
we've started to work on a strategy, but it will
eventually mean trying to convince the people in the
legislature that they should change the law."
In its decision, the court of appeals ruled that
gays and lesbians do not have the right to marry under
current state law, and that to deny them civil
marriage licenses is not a violation of their
constitutional rights to due process and equal
protection. "Whether such marriages should be
recognized is a question to be addressed by the
legislature," Judge Robert S. Smith wrote for the majority.
However, he stated that there are "at least two
grounds that rationally support the limitation on
marriage that the legislature has enacted" through
current state law: that "it is more important to
promote stability, and to avoid instability, in opposite-sex
than in same-sex relationships," largely because of
procreation, and that "it is better, other things
being equal, for children to grow up with both a
mother and a father."
Both grounds were dismissed by James Esseks,
litigation director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual
Transgender Project, at a midday press conference in
Manhattan, in particular the judge's reasoning that
legislators might think children do better with a mom and
dad. "That may well be a cultural assumption that many
of us, perhaps all of us, carry to some degree," said
Esseks, who was one of several attorneys involved in
the four different cases that were joined together as one
omnibus case.
"But the high court in Arkansas came to
precisely the opposite conclusion," he said, referring
to a recent ruling by that state's supreme court that
struck down a ban on gay foster parents. "It said
that there is no shred of factual or scientific evidence to
back up those claims. It's just not true that kids do
better or worse with gay people or straight people. So
what we have here is the highest court in the state of
New York [making] a decision today that is decades behind
Arkansas—and who would've thunk that?"
Susan Sommer, senior counsel at Lambda Legal,
highlighted a line in the dissenting opinion written
by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, who asserted that she
is "confident that future generations will look back on
today's decision as an unfortunate misstep." "Well, our next
step is clear," Sommer said, "and that is to go
to the New York state legislature and ask the elected
officials who are here to represent all New Yorkers to
do what's right—to do what's good for these families
and the whole state of New York."
She added that, except for Pennsylvania, "every
border jurisdiction—Ontario, Quebec,
Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, New
Jersey—offer comprehensive legal statewide,
jurisdiction-wide protections, ranging from the right
to marry to civil unions to comprehensive domestic
partnership. New York does not. We are woefully behind
the times."
Alan Van Capelle, executive director of
gay-rights group Empire State Pride Agenda, pledged to
have marriage equality brought for a vote in the state
legislature in 2007. "It took 31 years to pass a
sexual-orientation nondiscrimination act—31 years for
New York state to say that it was wrong to fire
someone from their job, kick them out of their house,
or deny them credit because of their sexual
orientation," he said. "I promise the couples up here today
it will not take 31 years to win marriage in the state
of New York."
He added, "If the Teamsters on Long
Island"—which recently came out in support of
same-sex marriage—"can recognize marriage equality,
then certainly the legislators in Albany can recognize
marriage equality."
As for the plaintiffs themselves, they were
disappointed with the court's ruling. "We're just
asking the state of New York to acknowledge our
relationship and protect us," said Cindy Bink, standing next
to her partner of 18 years, Ann Pachner. (The
Advocate)
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