Another Shot At The Ring

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his fellow Democrats say they will take another crack at legalizing same-sex marriage in the state, but no details have been forthcoming on how Cuomo will avoid the measure's embarrassing defeat in the State when conservative upstate Dems killed the measure in the State Senate.

Mr. Cuomo, who included legalizing same-sex marriage in his campaign platform, said Wednesday that he intended to ask the Legislature to take up the matter in its current session, which ends in June.

“We’ll be working very hard to pass it,” the governor, a Democrat, told reporters after delivering an encore of his budget address at Hofstra University on Long Island.

His pledge was greeted warmly by gay-rights activists, who have waited with some uncertainty to see whether Mr. Cuomo, faced with a daunting battle over the budget, would make a charged social issue like legalizing same-sex marriage a priority.

Legislation to do that has repeatedly passed the State Assembly, which is dominated by Democrats. But in December 2009, it failed in the State Senate, which was then also controlled by Democrats, by a vote of 38 to 24, an unexpectedly wide margin.

It is not immediately obvious how the legislation would fare markedly better this year, given that the composition of the Senate, which is now controlled by Republicans, has not changed significantly since the last vote.

But gay-rights advocates point to public-opinion polls that show more New Yorkers than ever support the legalization of same-sex marriage.

“This is legislation whose time has come,” said Ross D. Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, the state’s leading gay-rights organization. 

That may be true, but then again Gov. Paterson found out last year the hard way that the votes just were not there.   Then again, the economic argument for same-sex marriage might be good enough to convince state senators to use it to help close the state's budget gap, too.

We'll see.