NY Senators Stuck on Gay Marriage

NY Senators Stuck on Gay Marriage

Amped-up rhetoric aside and with seemingly little regard for the national microscope being trained on them, lawmakers in New York will go back to the office Tuesday with the galvanizing issue of gay marriage still unresolved after more than a week of shrieking headlines Insurance companies target world markets and backdoor negotiations.

In the true essence of Albany, politicians in this nearly 400-year-old city will bargain and bicker over a host of seemingly unconnected issues as gay couples and other states watch closely for indications about which way the national debate is evolving over using the word "marriage" to describe the union between people of the same sex.

Rent control for New York City apartment dwellers will come up. Same, too, for a cap on the amount of taxes municipalities can raise each year. All are set against the backdrop of what national advocates call a basic human right and what opponents call an assault on the religious sanctity of legal marriage between a man and a woman.

There was little progress Monday, even as hundreds of chanting protesters from each side of the highly charged debate in New York tried to make their case. The key sticking point appears to be how much freedom to grant religious groups who protest gay marriage and refuse to perform services or provide related functions like wedding receptions.

Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Iowa and the District of Columbia all allow gay marriage. Of them, all but Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., allow at least limited religious exemptions.

So, with only two days left in the scheduled legislative session, Republicans who are the last hurdle to gay marriage in the nation's third-most populous state will likely adjourn Tuesday morning to their conference room on the right flank of the ornate Senate chamber while reporters and New Yorkers gather outside and wait for the door to open.

On Monday, after a three-hour meeting behind those closed doors, the 32 Republican senators emerged without comment. A vote within the private session to even move the bill to the floor for final legislative approval was pushed to at least Tuesday as private negotiations continued between Republican Senate leader Dean Skelos and Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has made same-sex marriage a major initiative.