NY Passes Same-Sex Marriage

Unfortunately, the NY Senate, led by Republicans, caved in to the gay rights activists and allowed a vote legalizing same-sex marriage (SSM) in NY state. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, along with Senate and Assembly leaders Dean Skelos and Sheldon Silver, pushed non-standard legislative procedures for allowing a vote on the bill. Gov. Cuomo personally spent much time trying to persuade senators who had opposed same-sex marriage to change their position. Unfortunately, Gov. Cuomo succeeded.
As a result of this, there are several adverse consequences. First, the civil rights of persons and groups opposed to gay marriage will be violated. For example, after SSM became law in Massachusetts, Catholic Charities which ran a large and successful adoption service, was forced to either allow gays to adopt children in violation of Christian beliefs that a child does best with a mother and a father, or close its adoption agency. Catholic Charities had to end its adoption services which had existed for decades. We fully expect to see similar violations of basic civil rights of Christians and Jews in NY who believe marriage is solely between a man and a woman.
In addition, private companies and state and local governments in NY will be required to pay increased health and pension costs to cover the “spouses” of such married gays. Requiring this clearly increases the cost to do business in NY state, and the costs for taxpayers.
The manner in which this legislation was passed was especially bizarre in that they did not follow normal legislative procedures, and rules were constantly changed, twisted and by-passed. There was clearly no reason why such important legislation should have to be rammed though as it was. The bill passed 33-29 in the senate, and 80-63 in the Assembly. This is a blow to the institution of marriage, already in dire straights as it were, a blow to the civil rights of many Christians and Jews, and an economic blow to NYS taxpayers.