Andrew Cuomo hands pens to legislators after signing the bill into law late Friday. N.Y. legalizes gay marriage

Striking what advocates believe is a historic victory for gay rights, New York on Friday approved same-sex marriage, making the Empire State the sixth and largest state to allow gays and lesbians to marry.

The 33-29 state Senate vote is an enormous victory for first-year Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat who pledged during last fall’s campaign to push for gay marriage. It comes after an intense public and private lobbying campaign from a wide cast of politicians, celebrities and athletes, including New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and former President Bill Clinton.


Cuomo, whose two daughters attended the vote in the Senate gallery, signed the bill five minutes before midnight after a victory lap press conference. It will go into effect July 24, and when it does, the population of Americans for whom same-sex marriage is legal will double.

Cuomo after the vote said New York has continued its legacy as a beacon for social justice movements.

“The other states look to New York for the progressive direction,” Cuomo said. “What we said today is, you look to New York once again. New York made a powerful statement, not just for the people of New York, but for people all across this nation.”

After weeks of suspense, Stephen Saland, a Poughkeepsie Republican, announced himself on the Senate floor as the 32nd senator to back the legislation, tipping the balance in favor of it passing. Saland defined his vote as a matter of conscience during a stirring legal defense of an amendment exempting religious organizations from the law.

“I have defined doing the right thing as treating all persons with equality,” Saland said. “And that equality includes the definition of marriage. I fear that to do otherwise would fly in the face of my upbringing.”

Saland, who voted against gay marriage in 2009, was joined in announcing his newfound support for gay marriage on the senate floor by Mark Grisanti, a first-term Buffalo Republican who did not declare how he would vote until his floor speech Friday night. Grisanti, who said he struggled with the vote because he is Catholic, had been against same-sex marriage when he was elected last year, but changed his mind after an intense lobbying campaign, which included a call from Lady Gaga to her fans to contact him.

“I cannot legally come up with an argument against same-sex marriage,” Grisanti said.

Of the 33 senators to vote for the bill, 29 are Democrats and four are Republicans. Of the 29 who voted against it, all but one are Republicans.

Cuomo, who is scheduled to speak at 11:15 p.m., lauded the vote in a press release.

“New York has finally torn down the barrier that has prevented same-sex couples from exercising the freedom to marry and from receiving the fundamental protections that so many couples and families take for granted,” he said. “With the world watching, the Legislature, by a bipartisan vote, has said that all New Yorkers are equal under the law. With this vote, marriage equality will become a reality in our state, delivering long overdue fairness and legal security to thousands of New Yorkers.”

The Senate bill’s sponsor, openly gay Democrat Tom Duane of Manhattan, introduced the legislation with a tearful speech detailing his life from when he came out to his Catholic parents as a teen to his adult life fighting for gay rights. He spoke of how his young nieces and nephews already consider he and his partner married, even if they are not in the eyes of the law.

“Marriage says that we are family,” Duane said. “Louis and I are family. And marriage strengthens all family. It’s going to strengthen my family and all New York families.”

The lone senator to speak against the legislation was Bronx Democrat Ruben Diaz Sr., a Pentecostal minister who is the body’s harshest critic of the legislation. Diaz blamed Senate Republicans, who voted en masse against legalizing gay marriage in 2009, for turning on the issue.

“It is unbelievable that the Republican Party, the party that always defended family values ... is allowing a Democratic governor to divide the Republican Party and the Conservative Party,” Diaz said. “Same-sex marriage has been rejected by the majority of Americans when given the opportunity to vote for it.”

And the National Organization for Marriage, which lobbied against legalizing gay nuptials, said the state Republican Party “has torn up its contract with the voters who trusted them in order to facilitate Cuomo’s bid to be president of the U.S.”

President Barack Obama, at a Thursday fundraising stop in New York City, told a group of 600 gay and lesbian supporters that “gay and lesbian couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country” but stopped short of endorsing same-sex marriage. The White House has yet to issue a statement on the New York vote.

Gay marriage is already legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C. It was briefly legal in California until voters passed Proposition 8, which is being challenged in federal court, and in Maine, where voters in 2009 overturned legislation signed six months earlier by then-Gov. John Baldacci.

The state assembly approved the marriage bill for the fourth time in as many years last week. A 2009 same-sex marriage vote in the then Democratic-controlled senate failed with only 24 votes.

Only on June 13, when three previously opposed Democrats announced they’d changed their position did it appear the bill had any chance to pass this year. Two days later, two of the majority Republicans broke with their caucus to back the bill, bringing the number of senators publicly supporting gay marriage to 31, one short of the necessary 32.

Then, with New York state government in lockdown this week over lawmakers’ failure to approve a local property tax cap and rent regulation bill, the measure stalled while Cuomo negotiated exemptions for religious organizations with four Republicans seen as potential yes votes.

Cuomo, the assembly’s majority Democrats and state senate Republicans agreed to the exemptions Friday afternoon. The key sticking point was a clause that throws out the entire bill if any part of it is voided in the courts.

Bloomberg, the major financial supporter for the state senate Republicans, called the vote “the culmination of a decades-long struggle for equality by gay and lesbian New Yorkers.”

“We have taken the next big step on our national journey toward a more perfect union,” Bloomberg added.

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who announced her support for gay marriage when she was appointed to the Senate in 2009 by former Gov. David Paterson, thanked Cuomo and state lawmakers.

“New York State has sent a powerful message to the rest of the nation,” she said. “The right to get married and start a family is a basic, human right that must be shared by all Americans. Every loving, committed couple in America deserves this right. And no politician should stand in the way of this fact.”

It was not clear until late Friday afternoon whether a vote would even take place on the matter. But then shortly before 6 p.m. the state senate’s Republican majority leader, Dean Skelos, announced he would call a vote on the legislation.

While party leaders almost always direct their members how to vote in the New York legislature, Skelos said decisions on the gay marriage bill would be “a vote of conscience for every member of the Senate.”