Christine Quinn thinks NY is getting gay marriage

[WillParkinson]

Christine Quinn thinks NY is getting gay marriage

This morning at a press conference to kick off Pride Month in NYC, Speaker of the New York City Council Christine Quinn - an open lesbian - said that her sense after talking with Albany lawmakers is that gay marriage will pass this session, perhaps by New York’s celebration of the 40th anniversary of Stonewall.

“I don’t know it will pass - I work for the City Council, not the State Senate - but I think it will,” Quinn said.

The Speaker said that in talks with state senators, she realized that the conversation has changed. “Very few of the conversations are political,” she said. There was a time when gay activists needed to come with numbers to convince legislators that gays and lesbians lived in their district, that they voted, and that there were repercussions if a senator didn’t vote in favor of gay issues.

Now all of that is assumed, she said, and the conversations are more personal. “They say, ‘I’m having a hard time wrapping my arms around it,’” Quinn said. She added later that some senators, who are on the record as leaning toward no, or who are publicly on the fence, actually want to vote for equal marriage, but are afraid of “what they will say when they go back to their churches on Sunday.”

To help sway the vote, she suggested that gay and lesbian New Yorkers and their families write and call their state senator’s office with their personal story of how gay marriage will affect them.


http://www.365gay.com/blog/vanasco-christine-quinn-thinks-ny-is-getting-gay-marriage/

[PHIMG]

1. 2,500 Rally for Marriage Equality in QUEENS

Video at http://www.westernqueensformarriageequality.com

[La Lioness Priyanka]

6. i was there

[msongs]

2. religion should have NO SAY in this issue - freedom from religion is important nt

[keepCAblue]

3. I hope she's right. THIS would be cause to celebrate and deserving of a big ass k&r

[RetiredTrotskyite]

4. Major K&R

Religion needs to stay the hell out of this. Nice to see that they MIGHT want to support marriage equality but pitiful to see they don't have the stones to take on their churches.

[xchrom]

5. because i live in cali -- i will be so FUHRMISHT if new york

attains marriage equality before us.

really -- absolutely meshuga.

otherwise -- recommend!

:woohoo:

[TheWraith]

7. I wish I knew why people are so optimistic about this...

Looking at the whip counts, we need to pick up 12 out of 15 uncommitted State Senate votes to do this. The odds don't look good, when you consider that we've lost 5 Dems and not picked up the Reps to replace them. Still, State Senator Tom Duane sounds incredibly confidant about it, so he's got either rose-colored glasses, or one hell of a hole card.

[GodlessBiker]

8. It also is a matter of increasing expectations, so if you lose you have a lot of angry gay people...

who will go out there and justifiably protest.

[TheWraith]

9. Honestly I've always thought that's a bad approach to activism.

When people get let down they also tend to burn out faster. This isn't something that's going to be fixed in a day, or a week, and probably not a year; we need people who are calm, collected, and in it for the long haul.

In any event, we're not going to "lose" exactly. Malcolm Smith has said he's not going to bring the bill to a vote until he's sure it would pass, because he doesn't want to "embolden bigots." (His exact words, by the way.)

[GodlessBiker]

11. Not bringing it up for a vote just lets the anonymous bigots stay in the closet.

Force them out! No "I haven't yet decided" on this issue! Some may never announce a decision until they are forced to.

[closeupready]

10. What they can say in their churches is that they must keep a strict separation between

how they serve the wider public, most of whom do not share the church's religious beliefs, and how they live their lives in a personal way, being as consistent with their church as possible.