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News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJune 20th, 2011
The session in the New York state Senate isn’t wrapping up quite as quickly as planned:
Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, R-Nassau County, emerged from a three-way meeting with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, to say that discussions were continuing on working out the religious exemption language in a same-sex marriage bill. “We have staff people and members discussing with the governor religious protections. We’re still working on them,” Skelos said. “Once they’re prepared we’ll let you know what they are.”
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a.mcewen
June 20th, 2011
in other words, no one is going to be happy. we may cross the finish line but are going to need to rest and clean the blood off of ourselves before we can celebrate.
works for me.
TampaZeke
June 20th, 2011
They won’t be happy until there is a religious exemption “cutout” that allows any INDIVIDUAL or business to refuse to recognize any marriage between two people of the same sex.
I’m sorry but that should be a deal breaker. If we settle for it and then sue to overturn it later we’ll be falling for a trap that they are setting up to make us look like we’re attacking Christians and their religious freedom. This is a Trojan Horse that will come back to haunt us if we’re not smart enough to refuse it.
RJ
June 20th, 2011
“We need to make sure the language still allows discrimination of gay men and women by religious organizations” … “so we don’t lose votes”.
occono
June 20th, 2011
Religious Organizations have already said no sort of exemptions will make them happy anyway, so…
Chris McCoy
June 20th, 2011
“we need to make sure that any government employee can still discriminate against LGBT people for any reason.”
EZam
June 20th, 2011
@TampaZeke
Who cares? Conservative Christians are always attacking others who don’t agree with them. Fair is fair.
Bernie
June 20th, 2011
I wish I was still a resident of NY, and not in CO. I’d certainly be making calls left and right.
Kate
June 20th, 2011
Archbishop Dolan is no doubt spending megabucks of his Archdiocese parishoners money to pressure the pols to “consider the needs” of the religious bigots who have been fighting this all along. They are desperate and pissed, and are trying to delay the vote just one…more…day…so they can buy a vote we are counting on.
What a douchebag; I’m so glad Milwaukee got rid of Archdickhead Dolan…just sad that he wound up going where he could do some real damage to equal rights. I’ve got my fingers crossed, but I’m not forgiving him or the Catholic church for their hateful behavior.
customartist
June 21st, 2011
If Skelos doesn’t allow the vote, I am going to develop an address in his district, offer it to as many gays as I can find to share it, and work my butt of to unseat him.
Timothy Kincaid
June 21st, 2011
exactly.
It isn’t about religious organizations at all. They already pretty much don’t have to do anything they don’t like. You could put in a clause that requires every gay couple to chant “we’re really not married” every time a priest walks by, and they still wouldn’t like it.
Their issue isn’t about them, it’s about us. They’re less concerned about what they have to do and totally focused on what we get to do. And all of the ‘exemptions’ are a smoke-screen. It’s an effort to change the subject: “Let’s not talk about couples who need marriage rights, let’s talk about Catholic adoption agencies.”
I say call their bluff.
Put in the religious organization exemptions to whatever will appear to the public to be excessively generous. They really won’t impact us much at all (other than perhaps some general slight inconvenience and perhaps a few isolated examples of real mistreatment).
And when they still oppose it, it will be obvious – to those few who still don’t get it – that the Catholic Bishops are lying to them and that being unable to convince people by preaching they are now attempting to dictate their dogma by law.
Let’s not fall into the trap of fighting on their terms. Who cares if they get adoption agency exemptions or whatever – we get marriage. And once we do have marriage equality, any time some religious organization discriminates, they will only look foolish, hostile, outdated and downright mean.
We win either way.
eugene
June 22nd, 2011
@Timothy…Righteous Brother;-)the future is but a step further…freedom from Catholicism is breathing fresh air
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