The governor of Ohio has signed a bill that allows doctors to refuse medical care to LGBT+ patients if they have an objection based on “moral” grounds.
The provision was buried in a 700-page document of last-minute amendments to the state’s two-year budget bill, which governor Mike DeWine approved last Wednesday (30 June).
t allows any medical provider – from doctors and nurses to researchers, lab techs and insurance companies – “the freedom to decline to perform, participate in, or pay for any health care service which violates the practitioner’s, institution’s, or payer’s conscience as informed by the moral, ethical, or religious beliefs”.
This sweeping religious exemption raised major red flags for LGBT+ and women’s rights groups, with multiple advocates in the state expressing serious concern.
“Today governor DeWine enshrined LGBTQ discrimination into law, threatening the medical well being of more than 380,000 LGBTQ people in Ohio, one of the largest LGBTQ populations anywhere in the country,” said Human Rights Campaign president Alphonso David in a statement.
“Medical practitioners in Ohio can deny care or coverage for basic, medically-necessary, and potentially life-saving care to LGBTQ people simply because of who they are.”
The sinister religious exemption came as a surprise to many, as it wasn’t one of the many initiatives in the budget bill that were highlighted on the governor’s website.
“They know that they couldn’t pass this on its merits as a standalone bill, because literally no one is asking for this to be passed,” Dominic Detwiler of Equality Ohio told the Columbus Dispatch.
Sure enough, the law is overwhelmingly opposed by the state’s medical community, as underlined in a letter to budget negotiators signed by the Ohio Hospital Association, the Ohio Children’s Hospital Association, the Ohio State Medical Association, and the Ohio Association of Health Plans.
“The implications of this policy are immense and could lead to situations where patient care is unacceptably compromised,” they warned.
Yet governor DeWine defended the bill, pointing out that it only permits a refusal of care in cases of “conscience-based objections to a particular health care service”.
He insisted the conscience clause will change very little, and claimed that no one in Ohio will be discriminated against.
But Dr Todd Kepler, southwest medical director of Equitas Health, said the “widely broad” language in the bill will exacerbate existing barriers to care for many marginalised groups, like drug addicts, people living with HIV, and the LGBT+ community.
It’s people like these, already living with few options for healthcare in their community, that would be hit the hardest.
“Say I happen to be a gay patient and I wanted to see a provider in my town, and there weren’t really any other providers in town. But they find that morally unacceptable, they could turn me away,” he said to WCPO.
“And the language is so broad that that could even be done at an institutional level. So, if you have a hospital that perhaps has an affiliation with a religious institution, and again, that happens to be the only institution in town, theoretically they could turn that patient away for health care.”
As Randy Phillips of the Greater Dayton LGBT Centre added, “It begins a slippery slope when we start picking and choosing who we can treat and who we don’t want to treat.”
He asked: “How many are going to be denied care simply because they are living authentically?”
A trip to Manhattan took a dark turn for Dylan Spinosa and his friend upon their return home via the Staten Island ferry. While waiting for their taxi, a drunken stranger stabbed Dylan in the back while spewing anti-gay slurs.
Spinosa, 20, and his friends had gone into the city to celebrate pride and enjoy a day out now that COVID-19 restrictions have lifted. While they waited for their ride home, Spinosa and his friends noticed a drunken man harassing women with sexual remarks.
Spinosa told the New York Daily News that the suspect was “harassing every girl that he passed by, talking to them sexually.” Spinosa and another passerby tried to pressure the man to leave and stop bothering the women. When they did, the man replied that he had a gun, ignored their request, and began harassing another female.
“He was in her ear, sexually harassing her, saying he was going to have sex with her,” Spinosa described. “Me and this other guy were like, ‘Dude, leave her alone. Go home. You’re drunk. This doesn’t have to get any further.’ ”
Then things turned violent. The drunken suspect attacked the stranger by punching him in the face. Spinosa reacted by putting the assailant in the headlock and wrestling him to the ground. When Spinosa released him, he heard his friends scream.
“I turn around and the guy’s charging us,” Spinosa said of the moment. “I didn’t realize that he had a knife. It felt like he punched me. I thought he threw a beer on me.”
“He stabbed me in the back,” Spinosa elaborated.
The suspect then began yelling anti-gay slurs as Spinosa slumped to the ground, blood pouring down his back. Police arrived shortly thereafter and arrested Eric Shields, 47, while an ambulance rushed Spinosa to the hospital. Medics there treated his wound and discovered that the knife had scraped his scapula. He will need to keep his arm in a sling for some time. He is, however, expected to make a full recovery.
Police have charged Eric Sheilds with assault, weapons possession, menacing and harassment. The District Attorney has also not ruled out hate crime charges, pending an investigation.
The attack follows a recent rash of assaults on LGBTQ people this year. Earlier this month, police in Washington, DC arrested a man for harassing gay diners at a restaurant with a machete. In May, police in New York opened a hate crime investigation following the murder of a 24-year-old transgender woman.
The Supreme Court on Friday declined to wade into the contentious issue of whether businesses have a right to refuse service for same-sex wedding ceremonies despite state laws forbidding them from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.
The court dodged the wedding question three years ago in a case involving a Colorado baker who said baking a cake to celebrate a same-sex marriage would violate his right of free expression and religious beliefs. The issue came back in an appeal brought by Barronelle Stutzman, owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts in Richland, Washington.
The court said Friday that it would not take up her appeal, leaving the state court rulings against her intact and again ducking the hot-button issue. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch said the court should have taken the case.
Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips decorates a cake inside his store in Lakewood, Colo., on March 10, 2014.Brennan Linsley / AP file
Stutzman refused to provide flowers for the wedding of two longtime male customers in 2013, explaining that as a Southern Baptist, it would violate her religious beliefs and her “relationship with Jesus Christ.” Like the Colorado baker, she said her floral arrangements were works of art and that having to create them for same-sex weddings would trample on her freedom of expression.
The florist’s lawyer, Kristen Waggoner of the Alliance Defending Freedom, said other judges have ruled in favor of businesses claiming that they cannot be forced to create works that violate their religious beliefs.
“We are confident that the Supreme Court will eventually join those courts in affirming the constitutionally protected freedom of creative professionals to live and work consistently with their most deeply held beliefs,” she said.
Robert Ingersoll, who requested the flowers for his wedding ceremony, praised the Supreme Court for denying the florist’s appeal. He said he hopes the court’s action “sends a message to other LGBTQ people that no one should have to experience the hurt that we did.”
Ria Tabacco Mar, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represented the gay couple, said the denial is a reminder that “no one should walk into a store and have to wonder whether they will be turned away because of who they are. Preventing that kind of humiliation and hurt is exactly why we have nondiscrimination laws. Yet 60 percent of states still don’t have express protections for LGBTQ people like the kind in Washington State. Our work isn’t over.”
Supporters on both sides of the case line a walkway following a hearing before Washington’s Supreme Court about a florist, Barronelle Stutzman, who was sued for refusing to provide services for a same sex-wedding on Nov. 15, 2016, in Bellevue, Wash.Elaine Thompson / AP file
State courts ruled that Stutzman broke a Washington law forbidding businesses to discriminate on the basis of several factors, including sexual orientation. The Washington Supreme Court said providing or refusing to provide flowers for a wedding “does not inherently express a message about that wedding.”
After ducking the issue in the Colorado case, the U.S. Supreme Court sent Stutzman’s case back for another round in the Washington courts, where she lost a second time and again appealed.
“Religious people should be free to live out their beliefs about marriage,” her lawyers said in urging the Supreme Court to hear the case. They said states have taken action against calligraphers, videographers and other business that refuse to serve same-sex weddings because of their religious beliefs.
“These First Amendment violations must stop,” they said.
But the ACLU, representing Washington state, said Stutzman is not required to participate in any actual same-sex wedding ceremony.
The state also told the court that the florist refuses to prepare any flower arrangement for the wedding of a gay or lesbian couple, even if the arrangement is identical to one the shop’s employees would prepare for a heterosexual couple.
“It is thus clear that their objection is not to any ‘message’ sent by the flowers themselves, but rather to the message they perceive would be sent by serving a gay couple,” lawyers for the state said.
The ACLU said courts have repeatedly ruled that there is no right to be exempt, on religious freedom grounds, from general laws that are not enacted to disfavor religious beliefs.
“All people, regardless of status, should be able to receive equal service in American commercial life,” it said.
Meet Bryce Dershem, the 18-year-old valedictorian of Eastern Regional High School in New Jersey. While giving his graduation speech, his principal cut his mic after he referred to his queer identity. Undeterred, Dershem gave his uncensored speech to the crowd anyway.
The incident occurred during Eastern Regional High School’s commencement ceremony on June 17. Dershem, who identifies as gay, had an ongoing debate with the school principal, Robert Tull, over the content of his speech. Dershem had loaded his initial draft with references to his coming out as queer and his struggles with anorexia and mental health. Tull, however, forbade him to mention either. Finally, Tull gave Dershem an “approved” version of the speech, which scrubbed all references to sexuality and mental health. According to Dershem, Tull thought referring to either would alienate members of the audience.
“I felt like I was faced with this choice where I could either honor all the belief systems and virtues that I cultivated,” Dershem revealed, “or I could just follow the administration.”
With a bit of encouragement from his family, Dershem memorized the full speech and opted to give it on graduation day over Tull’s objections. Just one minute in, Dershem made reference to coming out, Tull pulled the plug.
“As it was happening, passion was surging through my veins that, yes, I need to give this speech,” told The Chicago Tribune, “because this is the exact kind of stigma that I want to fight against.”
Video of the graduation ceremony shows Tull pulling cords out of the sound system to silence Dershem. He then walked to the podium, took the mic and Dershem’s notes, and pointed to the approved speech on the podium. When the sound returned, a terrified Dershem opted to continue his speech from memory.
“I tried my very best to give the speech from memory, and I was just a mess throughout the whole speech and I was just so vulnerable,” he added.
When he finished, the audience gave Dershem a standing ovation. One woman in the crowd approached him in tears to thank him for his honesty.
“She told me her son hadn’t survived the pandemic due to mental health struggles and she started to cry,” Dershem recalled. “I thought, ‘This was the one person I made feel less alone,’ and I knew I did the right thing.”
It would appear Dershem is not alone in that sentiment, either. In the aftermath of the censorship debacle, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy issued a statement commending Dershem for “speaking truth to power, and for your resilience and courage.” Video of the entire speech posted by Dershem’s father has also nabbed more than 147,000 views on YouTube.
At the time of this writing, neither Principal Robert Tull nor administrators for Eastern Regional High School have commented further on the incident.
Another day and another Pride Month attack from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
When she’s not bashing Dr. Anthony Fauci and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or engaging in a double-act with fellow Rep. Matt Gaetz at pro-Trump rallies, Greene has had plenty to say about LGBTQ people.
Following earlier attacks on embassies flying Pride flags, she yesterday took to Twitter to lambast what may or may not be on the school curriculum.
Greene shared a video of a 14-year-old girl recently testifying before a school board meeting in a suburb of Indianapolis. The girl has not been named.
In the clip, the youngster, who has certainly had a difficult upbringing in her formative years, talks of being a “trauma child” and of being adopted from a foster home when she was four.
She complains about being taught about sexuality at school, which she believes should be a private matter. She also says she cannot see how she has white privilege, given her own background.
The clip was first shared on Twitter last week and went viral. Greene re-shared it yesterday and used it to attack schools talking about Critical Race Theory, gender identity of sexuality.
Critical race theory (CRT) has been talked about for the last 40 years in academic circles but has only more recently entered mainstream debate. It explores the idea that racism and patterns of discrimination in the US have shaped its society, legal systems and institutions.
In recent months, CRT has become an increasing lightning rod for some on the right of the GOP to attack anti-racism campaigners or those on the left.
Many educators and advocates believe talking about sexuality in school, and teaching kids that it’s OK to be gay, will reduce anti-LGBTQ bullying and would support many LGBTQ youngsters struggling with mental health issues. LGBTQ youth are at a far greater risk of attempting suicide than their straight peers. They contemplate suicide roughly three times as often as straight youth.
As explained by The Trevor Project, “All young people deserve access to safe and supportive public education, free from harassment and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
“However, policies known as ‘No Promo Homo’ and ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws ban educators from talking about LGBTQ people, issues and history entirely, or they only allow negative discussion. These laws keep supportive teachers from speaking out in the classroom, eliminating vital safe spaces for LGBTQ students.”
Civil rights organizations have filed two lawsuits in federal court against dozens of individuals for harassing and “ambushing” a Biden-Harris campaign bus in October. They are also suing the San Marcos Police Department, City Marshal’s Service, and the Director of Public Safety “who turned a blind eye to the attack.”
They are working with four individuals who were in or by the bus as named plaintiffs. One name plaintiff is Dr. Eric Cervini, an out historian and author of the book The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America, which was chosen as a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History.
With his last name coming first in alphabetical order among his co-plaintiffs, Cervini is the first name on all legal paperwork and the lawsuits are legally known as Cervini v. Cisneros and Cervini v. Stapps.
“Everyone on the campaign bus was doing what good citizens of any political party should do — engaging in the electoral process,” Cervini said in a statement. “The intimidation and harassment we experienced is unacceptable, and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen in future elections.”
The non-profit pro-democracy group Protect Democracy announced that they are bringing the lawsuit alongside the Texas Civil Rights Project and Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP. The four plaintiffs they are representing are Cervini, Wendy Davis, David Gins, and Timothy Holloway. Davis and Gins were passengers, Holloway was driving, and Cervini was driving alongside the bus.
“We filed this lawsuit because everyone should be able to engage in peaceful political activity free from fear, intimidation, or threats of violence,” Davis stated with the announcement.
The bus was traveling to Austin from San Antonio for a last-minute campaign stop on October 30, a week before the election concluded. The Biden-Harris campaign had hoped to sway voters in the Lone Star State after polling had showed that the ticket had better chances at winning the state in the election than previously believed.
The campaign bus, only carrying campaign staff and not the then-candidates, was then stopped outside of San Marcos, Texas, by a group of vehicles on Interstate 35. That led to a blockade by pro-Trump demonstrators and a confrontation “well beyond safe limits,” said Texas Rep. Sheryl Cole (D).
Cervini tweeted at the time, “These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road. They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car.”
He added, “The police refused to help. When I flagged down one officer, he said his hands were tied: ‘not my jurisdiction.’ He was wearing a blue stripe bandana.
“…As a historian who studied the rise of the Third Reich, I can tell you: this is how a democracy dies,” he said.
The Daily Beast reported that staffers saw the swarm of demonstrators (by car and truck) surround the bus and were either trying to prevent it from proceeding, or lead it off the road. The bus and accompanying vehicles were forced to park, and the pro-Trump demonstrators circled it with their cars, bullhorns, and signs. At least one collision occurred during the incident, which was captured on video.
The convoy of demonstrators eventually left, but the police made no arrests, and Texas Democrats and the Biden-Harris campaign cancelled multiple events that weekend.
Right before those events, the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., released a video encouraging Trump supporters in Texas to attend events that then-Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was at.
“It’d be great if you guys would all get together, head down to McAllen and give Kamala Harris a nice Trump Train welcome,” he said.
The state of Texas ended up giving its 38 electoral votes to Donald Trump, as the then-President took approximately 52 percent of the state’s popular vote, and Biden earned just under 47 percent.
Joe Biden would still win the presidential election without Texas, although Trump would not concede and instead attempted to overturn the election results. That culminated in a pro-Trump mob storming the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, in attempts to prevent certification of the election — although their efforts ultimately failed and the election was certified.
A boy in Georgia who had “gay” shaved into his head by family members has been placed in protective custody.
Video of the 12-year-old youth being berated by his family went viral on social media earlier this month. In the video, the boy — identified only as Tyler — is surrounded by family members, who call him a “gay ass bitch” and accuse him of “doing gay shit.”
The video zooms in on the boy’s head, showing “GAY” has been shaved into his hair. A man in the video is also shown slapping and punching the boy. The video was uploaded to Instagram Live on June 17 by the boy’s mother, where it caused outcry and demands for police intervention.
Read the full article. Activists have saved the video, a link to which is available in the story. I don’t want to share it here though, it’s so humiliating for the child.
President Biden on Friday named Jessica Stern as the State Department’s U.S. special envoy to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons, an announcement that coincides with the White House’s celebration of Pride month.
The position was left vacant under the administration of former President Trump. Biden will introduce Stern during remarks in the East Room Friday afternoon outlining his administration’s agenda to advance rights of LGBTQ+ people in the United States, the White House said.
Stern is currently the executive director at OutRight Action International, a group that advocates for human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer people around the world and works to stop discrimination and violence that they face.
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up the issue of whether the nation’s schools must allow students to use the bathroom that match their gender identities.
The court declined, without comment, to hear the case of Gavin Grimm, who has been at the center of a long legal battle with the school board in Gloucester County, Virginia. Grimm was born female but identified as male after his freshman year in high school, legally changing his name and beginning hormone therapy.
The principal at first gave him permission to use the boys’ bathroom, but the school board later adopted a policy saying restrooms were “limited to the corresponding biological genders.”
“For school officials, as for parents, the question how best to respond to a teenager who identifies with the opposite biological sex is often excruciatingly difficult,” lawyers for the school district told the Supreme Court. But the privacy rights of millions of students are at risk if their transgender classmates are allowed to use bathrooms matching their gender identities, they said.
Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union, representing Grimm, told the court that treating him differently by requiring him to use separate single-stall bathrooms singled him out “and stigmatized him as unfit to use the same restroom as his peers.”
They said there was no need for the Supreme Court to take up the appeal, because the lower courts that have considered the issue reached the same conclusion — that treating transgender students differently violates a federal law, known as Title IX, that bans sex discrimination in school programs.
Monday’s order denying review in the case means Grimm’s victory in the appeals court remains intact.
The American Civil Liberties Union celebrated the action.
“This is an incredible victory for Gavin and for transgender students around the country,” said Josh Block, a senior staff attorney.
Grimm said he is glad the legal fight is over.
“Being forced to use the nurse’s room, a private bathroom, and the girl’s room was humiliating for me, and having to go to out-of-the-way bathrooms severely interfered with my education,” he said. “Trans youth deserve to use the bathroom in peace without being humiliated and stigmatized by their own school boards and elected officials.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said the Supreme Court should have taken the case.
Related issues may soon be headed to the Supreme Court, including disputes over allowing transgender students to play on the school sports teams matching their gender identities.
Grimm originally went to court in 2015, arguing that the school board’s policy made him feel ashamed and isolated, and the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, ruled in his favor. It said refusing to let students use bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity would violate the federal law.
That ruling cited an Obama-era Education Department letter that said “a school generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.” The appeals court found that to be a reasonable interpretation of Title IX, and the school district appealed to the Supreme Court.
Two things have changed since the first time the case came before the justices. The Supreme Court ruled last year that a federal civil rights law bans employment discrimination on the basis of gender identity, and now the Biden administration has interpreted that ruling as applying to Title IX as well.
“A school’s policy or actions that treat gay, lesbian, or transgender students differently from other students may cause harm,” a legal memo from the Department of Education said.
Today, 70 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage. But on June 24, 2011, when the New York Legislature passed the state’s marriage equality measure, only 46 percent did, barely surpassing the 45 percent who opposed the right of gay couples to wed.
Five years earlier, in 2006, the New York Court of Appeals had determined the state constitution did not guarantee same-sex couples the right to marry. That left advocates with only a legislative remedy.
Failed attempts to pass marriage equality measures in 2007 and 2009, however, left supporters deflated.
Christine Quinn, an out lesbian who served as speaker of the New York City Council during both attempts, said the 2009 defeat in the state Senate felt “like the rug had been pulled out from under us.”
“It was so personally painful and so, really not to be dramatic, but devastating,” Quinn said. “And it gave strength to the other side. New York is seen as a progressive state … so us not having marriage equality, it made a great excuse for other states not to do it.”
Then came 2011: Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo was sworn into office in January after making same-sex marriage a key plank in his campaign.
“Previously, we had Gov. [Eliot] Spitzer, and he kind of crashed and burned. Then we had Gov. [David] Paterson, and he had no political juice,” Assembly Member Daniel O’Donnell, who introduced five marriage bills over four years, said. “Then we get Cuomo: Here was a guy who was willing to make marriage a priority.”
Cuomo had first publicly supported same-sex marriage when he successfully ran for attorney general in 2006.
“I don’t want to be the governor who just fights for marriage equality,” he told attendees at an Empire State Pride Agenda dinner in fall 2010, the Observer reported then. “I want to be the governor who signs the law that makes equality a reality in the state of New York. And we’re going to get that done together.”
Attempting a ‘herculean feat’
On Jan. 5, 2011, in his first State of the State address, Cuomo promised same-sex marriage legislation would pass that year. With that mandate, activists got to work: The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, partnered with Freedom to Marry, a national organization, and Empire State Pride Agenda, a statewide LGBTQ group, to form New Yorkers United for Marriage, an umbrella group laser-focused on getting legislation passed. They targeted regions across the state, from the Hudson Valley to the Capital Region, to garner support from constituents.
“We built this huge campaign over time, over six months,” David Contreras Turley, then-associate regional field director at HRC, told City and State New York in 2019. “We ended up harnessing about 125,000 constituent contacts for what I know is one of the largest grassroots campaigns in terms of numbers, especially in the LGBT civil rights movement.”
The time was right, but advocates knew they had to strategize differently. Not only had they lost in New York in 2009, but that same year a same-sex marriage bill signed into law in Maine was overturned in a voter referendum.
“We had the opposite of momentum,” said Brian Ellner, who left then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office in 2011 to help lead New Yorkers for Marriage Equality. “No one thought that we could get it done with a Senate that was controlled by Republicans. They didn’t even think the Senate majority leader would bring it to a vote. And we needed to find four Republican yeses, two years after we lost in a Senate that was controlled by Democrats? It was quite a herculean feat.”
For O’Donnell, one of six openly LGBTQ lawmakers serving in the state Legislature at the time, the way to win was to make it more personal: Previously, he said, state Sen. Tom Duane, Assembly Member Deborah Glick and other gay legislators had kept their partners out of politics.
“I knew that that wasn’t going to work,” O’Donnell said. “If I wanted my colleagues to see John and I as part of a couple that deserves equal rights, I had to show them my relationship.”
Daniel J. O’Donnell, democratic member of the New York State Assembly, left, kisses his husband John Banta, right, as supporters of same-sex marriage rally on Christopher Street after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and declined to rule on the California law Proposition 8 in New York, on June 26, 2013.Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images file
O’Donnell and his now-husband, John Banta, met on the first day of classes at Catholic University in 1978 and began dating two years later.
“I brought John around to a much greater degree than my colleagues had,” he recalled. Banta, the director of special events for the Metropolitan Opera, was a name on his own, and the pair made something of a power couple in Albany.
“It didn’t hurt that he was tall, thin and good looking,” O’Donnell joked. “But, more importantly, he was there, and people saw it as voting against us, rather than just voting against an issue.”
Duane also decided to start bringing his then-partner to Albany more often.
Preaching to the unconverted
They worked diligently to garner Republican support because they didn’t want marriage equality to become a party-line issue, “even though in my heart I knew it clearly was going to be,” O’Donnell said. He also sent weekly letters to his colleagues, with appeals coming from many different angles.
“One might be a poll, one was a letter from a California state senator who went from a ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ and got re-elected anyway,” he recalled. “One was a letter from Mildred Loving — who was, of course, the plaintiff in Loving v. Virginia, which took down anti-miscegenation laws at the Supreme Court — saying this is the same thing. We went around and around pivoting from the moral issue, to the legal issue, to the political issue, to try to give people enough cover to feel that they could vote for it.”
At the end of each letter, O’Donnell wrote, “John and I thank you for taking the time to consider this.”
For Ellner, a new approach meant reaching a new audience and changing the message.
“We couldn’t just talk in an echo chamber if we wanted to convert people to the cause,” he said. “At the time, support for marriage equality was barely at 50 percent in New York, I think, and we really wanted to get it to a majority, if not supermajority, before the vote.”
On March 9, 2011, Cuomo held a meeting with legislators, lobbyists and other major players inside the Capitol’s Red Room. After the disastrous 2009 vote, he wanted to be certain they weren’t working at cross purposes.
“He called a bunch of us to Albany to have a meeting about all of us who were working to get this done, to make sure we were aligned and coordinated,” Ellner recalled. “He made it very clear that this was a very, very high priority for him, if not his top priority that session. I don’t think he could have leaned in any harder to use all of his popularity and his influence.”
What many people don’t understand, O’Donnell said, is that “part of New York is more like Ohio” than New York City.
“We have very rural areas, we have very poor areas, we have some beautiful places. It’s a wonderful place to visit, but it’s not all liberal New York City people,” he said.
As he lobbied for the bill, O’Donnell said, “many senators said to me privately, ‘I think it’s the right thing to do, but my voters won’t tolerate it.’”
Ellner said he had senators, both Democrats and Republicans, telling him they needed to hear from their constituents that there was support. Legislators claimed that, in 2009, voter contacts “were running something like 3 to 1, or even 4 to 1, against marriage,” Ellner said.
So New Yorkers for Marriage Equality launched an enormous field effort with volunteers working across districts — knocking on doors, standing outside supermarkets — to talk to constituents and get postcards signed.
“When you talk to these senators, it’s about voter contact from within the district,” Ellner said. “They don’t care about a national email petition. They don’t care that Brian Ellner from Chelsea wrote to a senator upstate. They want to hear from their constituents, either by phone or preferably by mail. The mail gets counted and weighed, and that has a huge impact, because many politicians are focused on survival.”
Ellner said his team would get intelligence about a senator they had a shot at winning over, and then they would flood that lawmaker’s district with workers to get signatures.
“And if we heard that someone was definitely a ‘no,’ we would move everyone out of that district and into another one,” Ellner said. “We had really dedicated young people throughout the state who were couch surfing.”
That was the less glamorous part of the campaign, he admitted, “but there was no way we were going to let these senators hear more ‘nays’ than ‘yeas.’”
New Yorkers for Marriage Equality also launched a massive video campaign, with famous New Yorkers making the case for same-sex marriage. Directed by documentarian Annie Sundberg (“Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work”), the videos featured celebrities (Julianne Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, Anna Wintour), athletes (New York Ranger Sean Avery and Michael Strahan of the Giants) and establishment types (Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs and police Commissioner William Bratton).https://iframe.nbcnews.com/ZZoTZob
“We really wanted to broaden the support and show that there was widespread support across all different communities,” said Ellner, who knew Sundberg from Dartmouth College. “We just wanted this drumbeat of constant positivity, especially toward the end of the session when the legislature really slows down and there’s all kinds of deal-making going on. And frankly, we didn’t want to give the media the opportunity to write negative stories — to say that this was being derailed.”
Advocates turned up the heat on state senators, pressing their friends, relatives, even their rabbis, to track their vote and bring them to a “yes.”
But the clock was ticking. Cuomo had made his declaration in January and called everyone together in March. By late May a bill still hadn’t come forward, and the session ended in June.
Finally, on June 13, 2011, three Democratic state senators who had opposed same-sex marriage in 2009 — Joseph Addabbo Jr., Shirley Huntley and Carl Kruger — announced they would vote “yes” this time.
The final countdown
The Marriage Equality Act was introduced in the Assembly on June 14, and the following day, it passed the chamber 80 to 63. Though a healthy margin, it was a smaller one than the 2009 measure enjoyed.
A vote in the Senate was delayed while Cuomo negotiated with Republican leadership. For more than a week, thousands rallied outside the Capitol on both sides of the issue.
Finally, on June 24, the last day of the legislative session, Republican state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos announced that “same sex marriage legislation will be brought to the full Senate for an up or down vote.”
O’Donnell and Banta went to the Senate floor to watch the proceedings.
“The Capitol was entirely filled with people, so it’s hot as hell, and there are thousands of people on the stairways, in the hallways, everywhere,” O’Donnell said. “As each vote was taken, John was there. All my colleagues knew who he was. He was sitting in the audience, and many of the senators knew who he was. So we’re standing on the back of the floor of the Senate, and people are walking up to him and I and giving us both hugs and kisses.”
The vote was a nail-biter till the end, O’Donnell said — a rarity in Albany, where most bills don’t come to the floor unless passage is practically guaranteed.
State Sen. Stephen Saland of Poughkeepsie, a Republican who voted against same-sex marriage in 2009, announced he would vote “yes” the same day the bill came to the Senate floor.
“I have defined doing the right thing as treating all persons with equality,” he said during the debate on the measure. “That equality includes the definition of marriage. I fear that to do otherwise would fly in the face of my upbringing.”
‘All New Yorkers are equal under the law’
Late in the evening of June 24, 2011, the Marriage Equality Act passed the GOP-controlled Senate 33 to 29, with all Democrats and four Republicans voting in its favor. Cuomo signed it into law the same night at five minutes to midnight.
“With the world watching, the Legislature, by a bipartisan vote, has said that all New Yorkers are equal under the law,” Cuomo said in a statement. “With this vote, marriage equality will become a reality in our state, delivering long overdue fairness and legal security to thousands of New Yorkers.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs the Marriage Equality Act, with Harry Bronson, Matthew Titone, Daniel O’Donnell, Bob Duffy, Tom Duane and James Alesi, on June 24, 2011.Judy Sanders / Office of Andrew M. Cuomo
The New York Marriage Equality Act amended New York’s Domestic Relations Law to affirm that “no government treatment or legal status, effect, right, benefit, privilege, protection or responsibility relating to marriage shall differ based on the parties to the marriage being the same sex or a different sex.”
Quinn, who was in City Hill at the time trying to pass the city’s budget, remembers getting word during a press conference with Bloomberg. A staffer gestured wildly from the sidelines with a giant thumbs up.
“Oh God, as a New Yorker, it just made me so proud,” Quinn said, “and gratified that, finally, a discriminatory fact had been erased from the record. It meant a lot. It’s hard to hold your head up higher as a New Yorker, because we’re a pretty arrogant group, but I felt I could hold my head up higher.”
Ellner, who was in Albany as the vote was taken, said his only regret was not celebrating at the Stonewall Inn with the thousands of LGBTQ people and allies who had gathered there.
“It was kind of bittersweet to see it on CNN,” he said. “But, no, honestly, it was amazing.”
Banta stayed with O’Donnell in Albany that night, then the two returned to New York City the following morning. It was gay Pride weekend, and they marched in the parade with O’Donnell’s 5-year-old nephew.
“He told all his friends he was going to ‘Uncle Danny’s parade,’” O’Donnell said. “Literally, when the march would stop moving, people would chant my name on Fifth Avenue. But really, there was such a sense of euphoria — and relief.”
‘It felt miraculous’
The New York Marriage Equality Act took effect Sunday, July 24, 2011, and couples started getting married that same day.
One of them was Jonathan Thompson and Jonathan Polansky, who got married at the Queens courthouse in Forest Hills, after dating since 2002.
“We’d been together so long at that point that once the vote happened, we just sort of looked at each other and said, ‘So, we’re doing this, right?’” Thompson said.
It wasn’t a big romantic gesture, he said, but they were acutely aware of how monumental the moment was.
“It had been such a long push for marriage in New York, and we’d all been disappointed so many times before,” Thompson said. “When the bill actually passed — and during Pride Month, no less — it felt miraculous. There was just this communal feeling of emotion, and we just wanted to be a part of it.”
That wasn’t the only reason, though.
“If I’m being honest, I was also a little distrustful,” he said. “We wanted to do it right away, before anyone could take it away.”
The city had initially announced a lottery for the first day — Thompson and Polansky applied and won. Then officials decided to let everyone who had entered the lottery get a marriage license.
“So it ended up being a big, huge event,” Thompson said. “I remember it was extremely hot. We wanted to dress up, but it was stifling. So, we just went with business casual.”
It was a Sunday, when normally the courthouse would have been closed. But clerks and judges volunteered to work that day.
“Just to know that everyone there was rooting for us was a monumental thing,” Thompson said. “We took a number and sat in the waiting area, where we ran into some friends who were volunteers. Everyone there was talking to each other and taking pictures. It was definitely a sense of community and excitement.”
As a council member, Quinn didn’t have the power to perform ceremonies, but she was determined everything would go smoothly.
“My office, the speaker’s office, asserted itself into the full planning process,” she said. “I went to four of the five boroughs to congratulate and meet people who were getting married and also to thank the council staff that were there. I’ll never forget this one intern we had that summer. … He was holding up this huge sign that said, ‘This way to photos.’ Just the joy on his face and the joy of the people who were following him. I told him it looked like he was leading a parade.”
She recalled seeing City Clerk Mike McSweeney conducting the first ceremony in Manhattan, for Connie Kopelov, 85, and Phyllis Siegel, 76. The women had met in the mid-1980s volunteering with SAGE, an advocacy group for LGBTQ older adults.
Phyllis Siegel, right, kisses her wife, Connie Kopelov, after exchanging vows at the Manhattan City Clerk’s Office with New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn in attendance, back left, on July 24, 2011.Michael Appleton / Pool via Getty Images file
“It was magical,” Quinn said. “It was really, like, you couldn’t believe that a law, which on some level is just a piece of paper, could have such an impact. But it did — and it has.”
Everything had happened so fast that the offices of the city clerk hadn’t even had time to change its paperwork.
“The forms still had ‘man’ and ‘woman’ on it,” Thompson said. “It wasn’t embarrassing, though. It was amusing. It was nice. It was this feeling of, ‘We’re not gonna wait to fix it; let’s just get going, and we’ll all figure it out as we go.’ That was exciting.”
More than 800 couples registered to get married in New York City that first day alone, according to The Associated Press.
“People were booking flights to New York to get married,” O’Donnell said. “We didn’t have a residency requirement, so anybody could come here from anywhere in the world and get a marriage license and bring it back to where they’re from.”
‘Tremendous momentum’
For O’Donnell, the writing was now on the wall for federal marriage equality. Vermont, New Hampshire and the District of Columbia had already passed marriage laws legislatively, but New York was by far the largest state.
“Even in places like Mississippi or Alabama, at some point they were going to have a problem with the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution if they say, ‘We’ll accept straight marriages from New York but not gay ones.’” he said. “So it was coming.”
Ellner recalled “tremendous momentum” among activists coming out of the victory in New York.
“It felt like it was a matter of time,” he said. “It all shifted radically and so quickly. It was really the velocity that was surprising, but we felt, ‘As New York goes, so goes the nation.’”
A group walks down Fifth Avenue during the New York City gay pride march on June 26, 2011.Stan Honda / AFP via Getty Images file
It wasn’t a bloodless victory, though: The four Republican state senators who crossed the aisle to support the bill all were out of office within the next few years.
In September 2012, Sen. Roy McDonald, who represented conservative Saratoga County, was defeated in a Republican primary by Kathy Marchione. During the race, Marchione questioned McDonald’s conservative bona fides, claiming he backed same-sex marriage to secure campaign donations.
“I could have found an easier way to get re-elected,” McDonald countered during a primary debate, insisting he supported the bill as “a human being that cared.”
“You get to the point where you evolve in your life where everything isn’t black and white, good and bad, and you try to do the right thing,” he told reporters. “You might not like that. You might be very cynical about that. Well, f— it, I don’t care what you think. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
But an undeniable tipping point had been reached: In 2012, Maine, Maryland and Washington all enacted same-sex marriage measures at the ballot, and, for the first time ever, the Democratic National Convention adopted a political platform endorsing same-sex marriage. That May, then-Vice President Joe Biden came out in favor of same-sex marriage, quickly followed by President Barack Obama.
The following year, a key part of the Defense of Marriage Act was struck down by the Supreme Court, and nine more states recognized same-sex marriage — five through legislation (Rhode Island, Delaware, Minnesota, Hawaii and Illinois).
“We showed that you could do it,” O’Donnell said of New York’s LGBTQ advocates. “I offered to help anybody out there who wanted to know how to do it, because it takes work. In the House, I flirted with some colleagues, I threatened others. I promised every single one of them if they voted ‘yes’ that I would invite them to my wedding, which I did — our wedding had 450 people at it. They all came.”
O’Donnell said he had toyed with getting married on that first day, but July 24 was Banta’s birthday, “and I didn’t need to be the first,” he said.
The pair married on Jan. 29, 2012, at Guastavino’s in Manhattan, with both Democratic and Republican legislators, the state comptroller, Lt. Gov. Robert Duffy and Cuomo all in attendance.
“If you’ve never thought you could get married, you never spend any time thinking about what your wedding would be,” O’Donnell said. “The two things that I wanted were a wedding cake and an actual honeymoon. So we had our wedding, we had our cake and then we went to Paris.”
