Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, buys his bagels at H&H, his groceries at Fairway and his coffee at Lenny’s (Starbucks is, after all, a Seattle company). He roots for the Jets, exercises in Riverside Park and pops into the Museum of Natural History.

The idea of doing anything outside New York City seems alien to him.

“I can’t imagine not being in this city,” he said over coffee.

But after five decades of municipal fidelity, Mr. Stringer is refusing to do something rather momentous in the city of his birth: marry.

He and his fiancée, Elyse Buxbaum, have decided to wed in Connecticut this year in what they described as a protest of New York’s failure to legalize gay marriage.