It's rumors that only three NY State Senators, all Republicans, are undecided on how they will vote if gay marriage is brought to the floor of the Senate possibly tomorrow: Kemp Hannon (hannon@senate.state.ny.us), Stephen Saland (saland@nysenate.gov), and Andrew J. Lanza (lanza@senate.state.ny.us).
But their potential opposition is becoming less tenable as arguments mount against keeping same-sex couples excluded from marriage’s rights and responsibilities. Here are some that I have highlighted in the past.
I emailed each of the above state senators and bullet-pointed these arguments.
The Constitution’s call to Promote the General Welfare (US Const., Preamble & Sec. 8, Clause 1) gives reason for the expansion of civil marriage’s rights and responsibilities to gay couples, thereby also providing legal inducement for same-sex consenting adults to enter into this civil institution’s conservative realities: valuing another’s well-being and not just ones own, domesticity, creating a long-term household--caring more for community, law and order, property values, diligence in employment, long-term investments, etc. Expand it as the vote was for women, as civil marriage was for mixed-race couples. The general welfare is lessened by excluding gay New Yorkers from civil marriage, forcing them into legal permanently-single status and keeping them lesser in rights than incarcerated, cynically married, or even immoral citizens enjoying civil marriage rights by the accident of their birth as heterosexual. Increasingly, such inequality seems driven by animus.
The Economist, one of the most respected business publications in the world--free market and center-right--first argued for gay marriage as far back as 1996. They reiterated their argument in 2004.
If Massachusetts, Connecticut, and other states have done this and benefitted, why mustn’t New York?
Crain's New York Businesses' columnist Alair Townsend's offered commentary in this business publication with its fingers on the pulse of the NYC business community:
the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which withholds at least 1,138 rights and protections offered by the federal government to married heterosexuals. But today, our [i.e., New York's] state Legislature should cast off unreasoning fear, and act to protect the rights of an important minority group.
The Williams Institute (UCLA Law) says in NY are 42,600 same-sex couples. About 7,200 of NY's gay couples are raising children, and the children number about 14,000.
At least two recent polls show a majority of NYers support marriage equality: Quinnipiac and Siena College Research Institute. Presuming that New Yorkers under the voting age of 18 (24% of the state by the 2000 census) were not among those polled and roughly 60% of polled those New Yorkers now support marriage equality--that's 8,664,000 voting age New Yorkers who are in favor of expanding marriage’s rights and responsibilities to gay couples.
Louis J. Marinelli, a former National Organization for Marriage (NOM) organizer and a conservative-Republican recently announced, “I now support full civil marriage equality.”
A NYC Comptroller’s report in 2007 found the City’s economy alone would gain $142,000,000 after legalization of same-sex marriage. And how much more in the rest of the state? It’s not a key argument but nonetheless true: marriage equality will mean more jobs in New York.
"The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage," by Ted Olson, US Solicitor Gen’l under Pres. George W. Bush, can be read here.