Gov. David Paterson of New York has told state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states and countries where they are legal, his spokeswoman said Wednesday.
The governor’s legal counsel told state agencies in a May 14 memo to revise policies and regulations to recognize same-sex marriages performed in California and Massachusetts as well as Canada and other countries that allow gays and lesbians to marry, said Erin Duggan, the governor’s spokeswoman.
The memo informed state agencies that failing to recognize gay marriages would violate the New York’s human rights law, Duggan said.
Slowly, gradually, as each timorous reactionary whimper dissipates, another class of 2nd-class citizenship continues to end in this land.
Why should homosexuals not be allowed to suffer the same pains of marriage that heterosexuals do?
It’s only a matter of time before this becomes the norm. If two humans care that much for each other to make a commitment, why should their commitment not be recognized by the State?
As this is not a nation with any particular official religion, there should be no discrimination between heterosexual and homosexual marriage.
Some religions may not recognize homosexual marriage, but leave it to the religions, and not the government. This is called separation between Church and State, which is one of the tenants that this nation was founded upon.
This is very important for legal and financial reasons.
Like buying a home, where the salary of only one cannot afford the mortgage. With legal same-sex marriage, financial institutions must consider both sources of income.
Also insurance benefits, especially company paid-for policies that recognizes a “spouse”.
The list goes on…
Where people are uncomfortable with same-sex marriages is where there is a social cross-over. Those issues take time and education to get the bigoted people untrained from their parents’ views.
I see many bashing Obama’s run, because he’s a visible minority.
Would those same people oppose someone running for Governor (eventually President) if his/her Significant Other, married, is of the same sex?
Why not? Legal marriage means legal in all respects. Adoption, election. No gray areas.
Only prejudice.
The benefits and privileges of state sanctioned marriage have less to do with love than they have to do with solving problems that arise out of having children and a family. Alimony exists solely for the reason of providing an equitable payment to a spouse, usually the woman in the past, who stayed at home to raise the family and tend to the house and was kicked to the curb with no means or career to support herself (which is also a reason to cringe at the abomination that alimony laws have become). The same rationale of what is helpful for having a functioning family is why the other benefits of marriage exist. Not just because two people like each other and want to live together.
In the past, homosexuals have not been assumed to be raising children, for obvious reasons, so the above rationale for granting civil marriages in the first place hasn’t provided any compelling reason to grant them to that group. But, as times change, and more are having them through either artificial means or legally sanctioned adoptions, there really is less justification for denying the benefit.
Although for personal reasons (not religious) I don’t support the homosexual lifestyle, I do support their right to marriage if they so choose. My 2-cents.
#3, SL,
The benefits and privileges of state sanctioned marriage have less to do with love than they have to do with solving problems that arise out of having children and a family.
I see you married less for love than for financial reasons. I wouldn’t hesitate to state that every couple I know that has married has married for love. Arranged marriages aside and I personally am unaware of any off the top of my head.
I think it is important to let them get married if for no other reason than: They are trying so hard to not be gay they marry straight people and then realize 10, 15, 20 years later they can’t do it, and end up ruining several lives as they come out and embrace their “true self”
#5, regardless, thats not the reason why the state creates marriage benefits and privileges.
Here you go. Repeat something often enough and people will accept it as fact. sigh….
Gay Marriage????
Whats next Purple Zebra’s ??????
Pink Elephants ?????
Why, WTF?
Doesn’t it bother anyone that this is legislation from the bench? The majority of Californians voted against this. The court has subverted the process.
Regardless of how you feel about the issue, this ruling has further eroded our democracy.
Not that this is anything new (McCain/Feingold, Roe Vs. Wade).
#5:
My wife and I loved each other before marriage, and lived together for a long time.
We got married for financial reasons, because with our individually meager incomes, it was the only way we would be allowed to buy a house together. Fortunately, marriage didn’t mess up the relationship in our case (though I’ve seen several perfectly good relationships dissolve after the two people get married).
Times have changed, and not being married is no longer a barrier to two unmarried people buying a house (our daughter bought a home with her boyfriend, and they got married 2 years later).
#5
There are more than you think. I know quite a few people in their late 20’s, both male and female, that have no desire to get married. I would not have married if it were not for the many legal roadblocks I ran into by not being married. Getting health insurance, buying a house even renting a car in some cases were substantially more difficult without being married.
So, while it is true I would not have married without love, it is also true that I did not marry solely for love. I know quite a few that share that sentiment. Getting married purely for love with no thought of practicality generally ends in disaster.
#9 – I call you on your BS.
I’ve been single for years (40+). I’ve rented more cars than I can count. I’ve bought homes in four states. I’ve lived in five states, worked in seven, and never had anybody require me to be married for anything you are describing.
I support the rights of gay marriage. But you’re just making stuff up.
The rights for gays to get married is a simple answer: civil rights… It’s not a choice anymore than being black is a choice. If somebody wanted to say “look at Michael Jackson. He changed from being black to being white” even the craziest person around would think them insane for thinking that proved being black was a choice.
But somebody says basically the same thing about some gay guy who forced himself to “not be gay” with religious and mental conditioning of the nth degree, and for some reason he is accorded creditability in the debate. Instead, we should just shout him off the stage like we would do in any rational debate with an obvious crazy bigot. And if the bigot doesn’t shut up then… we’ll he is crazy. Commit him! Or deport him to some island that could then be used later for nuclear testing.
Does this mean the NY also recognizes pluralist marriages from Islamic countries?
We’re on a roll. Next up, in the name of equality, we must ensure that any legal suggestion that married homosexual couples can not procreate would violate New York’s human rights law.
RBG
what is a gay union of a man and a woman? Is this a happy marriage?
Yes, New York’s mandatory sterilization for all homosexuals must be continued indefinitely! They must not be allowed to procreate!
RGB
/sarchasm
I’m politically conservative, and I have two words for this…
Rock on.
#11 RGB
Give me one good reason why a same-sex married couple would not be allowed to procreate/adopt a child?
Because the child would grow up to be like their parents?
Tell them to K.D. Lang’s face, or Jodie Foster, or now, it seems, Lindsay Lohan.
I’m all for gay marriage.. It helps solve a gigantic problem in the USA. Overpopulation and overuse of limited resources. Mixed couples, like you know, a man and a woman, should be restricted from marriage. Any government that will provide them with the necessities required to raise families with kids for the future should be taken down at the polls. Stop all this foolishness now. Create penalties for mixed marriages where they have to pay extra taxes and both people are required to be in the workplace.
Let those urchins find out how to survive on their own. Once they can walk on their own and shove things to eat in their mouths, they like the birds will survive if strong enough. Stop this foolishness of coddling those kids as if our future depended upon them.
13 RGB
Ho-ho! A dope-lganger. I’m flattered.
RBG
@#1 “This is called separation between Church and State, which is one of the tenants that this nation was founded upon.”
Wrong.
Separation of church and state would be the government being totally uninvolved in marriage, being unable to write any laws regarding marriage nor keeping any statistics of marriage nor asking.
There should not be any government sponsored benefits to marriage. It should be a matter of contract law.
This all is a classic case of government creep, where it starts with X, then goes to Y and then Z and then W …
This — benefits and rights tied to marriage — and example of given enough time, the government can royally screw things up.
An example of #21 above:
Polygamy. Why is this a problem?
– A man can have children out of wedlock with 3 women, and that’s hunky dory.
But if he marries all 3 at the same time, that’s a crime? Why? For what purpose?
The reason gay marriage is necessary, and in the current environment it is, are due to legal and medical rights.
— Which is asinine
Marriage never had anything to do with trivial legal rights and medical rights to begin with.
Gay marriage should have always been allowed because the government should have never been involved in marriage to begin with.
In the end, marriage is about health insurance, tax benefits, trivial legal rights and other things the government has conferred onto it.
Is that separation of church and state?
You can call it gay or perverted but two guys pumping each other up the keister or sucking each others johnson is still a creepy lifestyle.
i guess now all those people who were afraid that gay marriage was going to affect the sanctity of their own marriage are now heading to divorce courts…
and into the nearest justice of the peace, because most conservative males are closet homos
hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahah!
#12
I rented a car in Nevada a couple of months ago. While filling out the paper work, they would only put my wife on the car using my insurance because we were married and they only believed we were married because her last name matched mine since the address on our driver’s licenses were different (she had the new address and I had our previous address).
I did not say it is impossible to rent a car without being married. It is *easier* to rent a car and designate your spouse as a driver if you are married.
>>two guys pumping each other up the keister or
>>sucking each others johnson is still a creepy
>>lifestyle.
That’s the great thing about living in the land of the free, the home of the brave: If you think a lifestyle is creepy, don’t fucking live it.
See how easy??
Next issue?
>>most conservative males are closet homos
That certainly seems to be a valid point, although not all of them manage to stay in the closet.
Nobody stops any two people from loving one another and from living together–so all basic human rights are recognized.
Now as to “privileges” that the state spends/foregoes tax revenue on, THAT should be a matter of legislative action==not the court finding new rights.
I’m sure we are moving to a society of gay marriage and later even polygamous marriage if we don’t run out of food first–but how we get there is of academic interest.
#26 Mr. Mustard
My aren’t you the open minded kind, so free with everyone else’s money whose taxes will rise again in order to pay for all these new government benefits. OR how much this creepy lifestyle has cost everyone else in the form of spreading AIDS and the resulting research costs.
So you see your open minded attitude is not so black and white.
>>==not the court finding new rights.
Bobbi, haven’t we been over this a million times already? The court didn’t “find new rights”, it overturned a discriminatory, homophobic law banning something that was never banned before.
And Tooty, your comments about AIDS sicken me. You are among the worst of the worst hatemongers. Do you really think that a monogamous marriage between two men or women is going to result in increased incidence of AIDS compared to the closet-homo conservatives smoking pole at the local glory hole, or wrangling rump on the DL?
Sheesh.
Maybe when you get out of middle school you’ll have a broader perspective on how things actually work.