Spitzer: Gay Rites Ahead

BYLINE: JACOB GERSHMAN -, Staff Reporter of the Sun

By Day 365, Governor Spitzer will propose legislation legalizing gay marriage in New York, a top aide to the governor said yesterday.

The Spitzer administration moved to reassure gay-rights advocates that it wasn't backing down from a campaign promise to support a same-sex marriage bill. The governor did not address the issue specifically in his 61-minute State of the State address on Wednesday.

"The governor made a commitment to advancing it this year, and he will do so," Mr. Spitzer's communications director, Darren Dopp, told The New York Sun.

Gay marriage, however, isn't a Day One issue, he said. For now, the administration is chiefly concerned with pushing forward its ethics and economic agenda and is keeping the issue of gay marriage off the front burner. "We have to prioritize and that's how we prioritized," Mr. Dopp said. "That's not to say other matters are not important."

Outlining his priorities for the year, Mr. Spitzer's State of the State address did not mention gay marriage but envisioned New York as a "state that understands that the civil rights movement still has chapters to be written."

The State of the State address is usually the most scrutinized speech a New York governor delivers. For many interest groups, having their issues mentioned in the speech is an important symbolic victory that they can crow about to their members.

After Mr. Spitzer finished his speech, environmentalists, medical researchers, unions, and education activists released statements applauding the governor for taking up their issues. Gay-rights groups were noticeably missing from the chorus of cheers.

In a press conference afterward, a reporter asked Mr. Spitzer if his remarks about the chapters yet to be written was a reference to gay marriage. Mr. Spitzer responded: "It was a reference to a range of areas where the civil rights movement has not yet been completed, and I think that subsumes all of them."

Mr. Spitzer was asked if one of those areas included gay marriage. The governor replied: "It includes all of the areas where civil rights still needs to be pursued."

Coming from a politician famous for the precision of his language, the omission raised questions about whether Mr. Spitzer was signaling a change in his position on the issue. As a candidate, Mr. Spitzer said same-sex marriage should be legal and said he would draft legislation that would make New York the second state in the nation - after Massachusetts - to extend marriage to same-sex couples.

The issue was placed in the hands of New York politicians after the Court of Appeals ruled in July that the state constitution does not require that same-sex couples be allowed to marry. The court, which is the state's highest, said the Legislature has the authority to legalize same-sex unions.

"I have said with great clarity that I think that same-sex marriage should be legal," Mr. Spitzer said in a July debate against his Democratic opponent, Nassau County executive Thomas Suozzi, according to a New York Times transcript. "I will propose a bill to permit that to be the case here in the State of New York. And I will act on that if I'm fortunate enough to be elected governor."

All of the other statewide candidates elected - Lieutenant Governor David Paterson, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, and Comptroller Alan Hevesi, who has since resigned - said they supported gay marriage.

Gay-rights advocates said in interviews that they noted that the absence of any mention of gay marriage in Mr. Spitzer's speech but were confident that the governor was sticking with his pledge.

"Some New Yorkers have been wondering why there wasn't a specific mention, but in fact, the reference to the unwritten chapters of the civil rights struggle includes us, and we will be putting the emphasis on his actions," the director of public policy and governmental affairs of the Empire State Pride Agenda, Ross Levi, said.

State Senator Thomas Duane, a Manhattan representative who is openly gay, speculated that Mr. Spitzer has taken note of President Clinton's failed effort to end the military's ban on gays. "When President Clinton came in he got very specific about his plans ... and it became a distraction for some of the other things he wanted to accomplish. And he didn't get a win on gays in the military. It was probably a lesson learned for Eliot Spitzer," Mr. Duane said.

It's unclear how much support such a bill would get from lawmakers. The Democratic speaker of the Assembly, Sheldon Silver, hasn't taken a position on gay marriage, while some members of his caucus are strongly in favor of it. The Republican leader of the Senate, Joseph Bruno, who controls a fragile three-seat majority, has said he is opposed to gay marriage. But his position on gay rights has changed over the years, as some Senate members have responded to demographic changes in the state by abandoning some more conservative positions.

In 2001, Mr. Bruno reversed course by extending health insurance benefits to gay partners of state Senate employees. "He believes marriage is between a man and a woman," a spokesman for Mr. Bruno, Mark Hansen, said.