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Tough Truths About Winning Marriage Equality
In this special essay, professor Daniel Pinello explains why even a Democrat-controlled Senate won’t pass marriage equality soon—and what you can do to change that fact.

By Daniel Pinello
Friday, June 20, 2008

Face it. New York State wants for gallant knights of the Round Table.

Simple majorities on the California Supreme Court this year and on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2003 determined that their state constitutions mandated marriage equality. But just two of six jurists on the New York Court of Appeals were bold enough in July 2006 to find a similar right of lesbian and gay couples to marry in the Empire State. Instead, our state’s highest court declared that same-sex weddings could happen here only if the legislature and governor permitted them. The judges hit the policy ball into the court of the political branches.

And initial events boded well for success there. In November 2006, the state’s first major-party candidate for governor to endorse same-sex marriage won a landslide victory. Then, within six months after Eliot Spitzer’s inauguration, the New York Assembly passed a marriage-equality bill. So by a year ago, two of the three key players in Empire State lawmaking backed the right of same-sex pairs to wed.

But the third participant, the New York Senate, resolutely blocks the way to legalization of relationship rights for lesbian and gay couples. Presiding over a shrinking Republican majority, outgoing senate leader Joseph Bruno has refused to permit a marriage-equality vote, and the incoming leader, Dean Skelos, is unlikely to change tactics.

Dem Wins Not Enough

Merely two seats in the 62-member state senate separate Republicans from Democrats. Accordingly, the current strategy of LGBT advocates like the Empire State Pride Agenda and Marriage Equality New York is to fight in the fall elections for a change in the partisan control of the chamber.

But the sad reality is that even a Democrat-controlled Senate won’t pass marriage equality soon. At least four Democratic senate incumbents (Darrel Aubertine, Efrain Gonzalez, Jeffrey Klein, and George Onorato) aren’t willing to support same-sex nuptials. Thus, a plan of action to capture two GOP senate seats in November will fall short. Rather, a six-seat strategy is the necessary minimum for success in the next legislative session. And that’s a tall order, even in a “change year” favoring Democrats nationally. The average net shift in recent election cycles has been just two state senate seats.

To make matters worse, the New York LGBT community is only half-heartedly behind the marriage goal. Consider the experience of me and my domestic partner Lee. We’ve lived together in Nassau County for 13 years. On April 28, we committed an act of civil disobedience by applying for a marriage license at the Oyster Bay Town Clerk’s office and then refusing to leave once we were turned down. The police arrested us for trespass, and the district court subsequently dismissed the charges in the interests of justice.

Our public demonstration in favor of marriage equality garnered substantial sympathetic press. Within 48 hours of the sit in, we had seven interviews with Long Island and New York City broadcast media, two for live shows. Three half-page articles about our activities appeared in Newsday, as well as a front-page profile in the New York Times’ Long Island section.

And despite ample prior notice about the events, no protesters showed up at our civil disobedience or for our day in court. Indeed, we received only positive responses at work, in our neighborhood, and from the community at large.

Long Island Races Pivotal

With this favorable experience, we thought that if once was good, twice or more would be even better—especially because the political importance of Long Island can’t be overstated in the battle for marriage equality in New York State. Eight of nine state senators from Nassau and Suffolk counties are Republicans standing in the way of lesbian and gay couples’ relationship rights. These eight incumbents represent 25 percent of the Senate’s governing majority, and swaying merely one or two Long Island GOP senators to back same-sex marriage would greatly foster statewide success in the fight for our right to wed.
So Lee and I asked 40 other gay and lesbian couples we know in Nassau and Suffolk to follow our example of civil disobedience. We shared our positive experience with them: how the legal exposure would be minimal, with their facing charges of just trespass or disorderly conduct (which aren’t crimes but comparable to traffic violations); how experienced mediators would negotiate with police and other officials at the town clerks’ offices; and how local attorneys would be willing to represent the demonstrating couples in court without charge. Yet not one of the other 40 same-sex Long Island pairs would even consider doing their own sit in.

Would you write a letter?

One might retort that exhorting couples to take over a town clerk’s office calls for too much from them. After all, few people, gay or straight, have the personal wherewithal and political acumen to stage public protests on their own accord.
Fair enough. But what about asking gay New Yorkers to do more mundane political tasks, to perform activities involving much less commitment and exposure? Like writing your own state senator about marriage equality.
Lee and I also made those kinds of requests on the Island. Pursuant to New York’s Freedom of Information Law, we purchased an electronic copy of all registered voters in Nassau County from the Board of Elections. That list contains extensive information, including full names, residence addresses, party registration, dates of birth, and voting histories for the last eight years. Between September 2006 and February 2008, we used that data to send a letter of introduction to voters in Republican senate districts asking them to contact their state legislators on behalf of marriage equality.

Targeting all Democrats, Republicans and Independents under the age of 70 who voted in the last two general elections, we blanketed northern Nassau systematically, street by street, election district by election district. More than 20,000 households received our written request. As a result, in excess of 1,200 regularly voting constituents sent more than 2,500 letters to Albany lawmakers lobbying in favor of the right of all New Yorkers to wed the person of their choice.

Among those answering our call, about 45 (or four percent) self-identified as lesbian or gay. That ratio is consistent with the four-percent national average of polling respondents who self-identify as LGBT. But bear in mind that this wasn’t political mobilization in Mississippi, but in a New York City suburb, where one would expect a higher concentration of out gay people. In short, a significant portion of LGBT recipients of our message simply didn’t respond to it.

Moreover, the subject was one in which same-sex couples ought to have had a personal stake, whereas other people wouldn’t necessarily have had immediate concern about the issue. So the percentage of lesbian and gay respondents should have been higher than what might have occurred with other policies.

And we weren’t asking people to do much—just to sign lobbying letters that we prepared for them, and then to mail the documents in self-addressed, stamped envelopes that we provided. In truth, their political task could not have been easier. But that apparently was expecting too much of some gay folks.
Time and again, Lee and I addressed envelopes for two men or two women of roughly the same age living at one residence and wondered, “Will this couple reply?” and later were disappointed.

In the end, we were saddened by the singular lack of political awareness, aspiration, and commitment in our local LGBT community. And if our experience at the county level is characteristic of the statewide gay population, then organizations like the Pride Agenda and MENY must surely be dispirited in rousing that group to lobby for marriage equality.

Legislative struggles for social change in favor of a small minority necessarily must involve large coalitions of sympathizers from the greater population. That was certainly true in our Long Island campaign. Indeed, Lee and I reached the surprising conclusion that it’s no more difficult to mobilize the straight community around same-sex marriage than it is LGBT New Yorkers.

A Senate Solution

Nonetheless, we can be our own knights in shining armor. Our community has the latent power to break the Senate logjam by itself. Take GOP incumbents Serphin Maltese and Frank Padavan, longtime foes of lesbian and gay rights. Maltese won re-election in 2006 by just 51 percent of the vote and is being challenged this year by Democratic City Councilman Joseph Addabbo. Likewise, Democratic Councilman James Gennaro is taking on Padavan. If just 10 percent of all lesbians and gay men living a subway or bus ride away from these northwest and northeast Queens districts donated two hours each week through Nov. 4 to work for the challengers’ campaigns, a change in the partisan control of the Senate would be assured come January.

And the loss of the GOP majority would trigger a cascade of retirements among the seven Republican senators older than 75 years of age who now desperately cling to their party’s weakening grasp on power. Replacing such a large cohort of elderly lawmakers with younger successors would surely hasten the moment when all New Yorkers can sing “Get Me to the Church on Time.”

Daniel R. Pinello is a Professor of Government at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He can be reached at dan@danpinello.com.

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