Originally posted by Waffle Ryebread

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Originally posted by PYRATROOPER

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I am making this a public apology before I fix my other posts.

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No. The Edit button is not to be used as your personal time machine. What's done is done.

If I catch you rewriting any old posts, I will revoke your editing privileges.

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Gov. Andrew Cuomo, closely allied with the Senate Republican majority that once blocked gay marriage, says he's now optimistic it will be legalized in New York.

The Democrat says he believes the Senate will produce the 32 votes needed for passage in the six weeks remaining in the legislative session.

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Last week, a Gallup poll showed that a majority of Americans support gay marriage. It was the third such survey this spring, and if you add in the number of Americans who support civil unions, public support for same-sex relationships has become the dominant position. Anti-gay marriage activists, though, aren't going down quietly; in Minnesota, a bill to put an anti-gay marriage referendum on the 2012 ballot recently passed the House, and conservatives in Iowa (with an assist from Newt Gingrich) successfully ousted three state supreme court judges who had ruled the state's gay marriage ban unconstitutional. But this is a far cry from the days of, oh, 2004, when a flurry of anti-gay marriage propositions at the state level helped propel President George W. Bush to a second term.

So how far has the pendulum swung? Even Jim Daly, president of the right-wing group Focus on the Family, seems to be waving the white flag. Here's what he told the evangelical World magazine in its June issue:

We're winning the younger generation on abortion, at least in theory. What about same-sex marriage? We're losing on that one, especially among the 20- and 30-somethings: 65 to 70 percent of them favor same-sex marriage. I don't know if that's going to change with a little more age—demographers would say probably not. We've probably lost that. I don't want to be extremist here, but I think we need to start calculating where we are in the culture.

Daly has taken a more conciliatory approach to to traditional hot-button issues than his predecessor at Focus, James Dobson, so perhaps it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to see him speak so candidly. (For more on the shift to a kinder, gentler, skinny jeans-ier Focus on the Family, check out Stephanie Mencimer's piece on the group's hipster makeover.) But it can't help the anti-gay religious right to have such a prominent social conservative say that the crusade against gay marriage has essentially been lost and that it's time to accept that reality and move on.

This isn't a permanent cease-fire; Daly merely thinks that Christians need to get their own marriages in order before lecturing from the moral high ground: "What if the Christian divorce rate goes from 40 percent to 10 percent or 5 percent, and the world's goes from 50 percent to 80 percent? Now we're back to the early centuries. They're looking at us and thinking, 'We want more of what they've got.'" As he puts it, "we should start with how to get dads reconnected to the family and committed to their marriages."

Come to think of it, isn't that what an organization called "Focus on the Family" should have been doing all along?

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Originally posted by BlackNemesis13

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Cool. I remember you somewhat from way back when geeogree. Glad that your views regarding legislation on this issue have grown more tolerant, and that you don't support the excessive hate that some people show. It's always a good thing when people show compassion for their fellow man, even if they don't agree at all with their lifestyle. I wish more people were tolerant and open-minded.

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Fifty-eight percent of New Yorkers support the legalization of gay marriage, a new poll released Thursday found.

The poll by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute found 58 percent of respondents in favor of allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry. Thirty-six percent are opposed and 6 percent don't know.

“New Yorkers support same-sex marriage, but their top priorities are the property tax cap and ethics reform,” said Maurice Carroll, director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute.

Support is highest among Democrats (72%) and independent voters (58%), but a majority of Republicans (64%) oppose Governor Andrew Cuomo's plan to make New York the sixth state to legalize the institution. Support for marriage equality among men and women is nearly identical (58% for men; 59% for women).

The results mirror an April poll by the Siena Research Institute at the Siena College in Loudonville, New York, which also concluded that 58 percent of New Yorkers support gay marriage.

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Originally posted by FieryIce

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8 senators (5 republicans + 3 democrats) remain undecided as of yet; 6 have to decide in favor of gay marriage for the bill to pass.

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Three wavering Democratic lawmakers in the State Senate on Monday announced that they now support the legalization of same-sex marriage in New York, marking a potential turning point for the long-debated measure.

Within an hour of the announcement by the three Democrats, a Republican senator said that he, too, is open to supporting same-sex marriage.

“If the bill comes to the floor the way that I would like to see it, I will support it,” Senator James S. Alesi, a Monroe County Republican, said before going into a meeting with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Mr. Alesi did not elaborate.

The three Democratic senators — Joseph P. Addabbo Jr. and Shirley L. Huntley of Queens and Carl Kruger of Brooklyn — all voted against the measure in 2009, when it failed by a wide margin. Their switch to the yes column leaves all but one Senate Democrat supporting same-sex marriage — and the fate of the legislation in the hands of the Republican majority in the chamber.

“I believe that votes will be there for marriage equality if the vote happens,” said Mr. Cuomo, a first-term Democrat who has made same-sex marriage a top priority, told reporters at the Capitol Monday afternoon.

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New York is within a single vote of legalizing gay marriage after a second Republican state senator said on Tuesday that he would support the measure should it come to the floor this week.

The senator, Roy J. McDonald, from the capital region, made his comments to reporters amid growing indications that Republican leaders would bring the bill to an up-or-down vote on Thursday or Friday.

Three other Republican state senators, speaking on condition of anonymity because their conference had not yet formally debated the measure, said they believed the bill was almost certain to come up for a vote and that it would likely pass, making New York the sixth, and largest, state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage.

The vote tally in the State Senate now stands at 31 of 62 members, with one more vote needed to approve the law. The Assembly has passed the measure several times before and is likely to do so again this week if the Senate moves ahead.

“I think I’m doing the right thing, it’s the appropriate thing, and if the public respects that, I’m grateful,” Mr. McDonald said as reporters pressed him in the Capitol for his decision. “If they don’t, then I move on.”

Mr. McDonald’s announcement followed a declaration Monday by a Republican colleague, James S. Alesi of Monroe County, that he would also support the bill. Three Senate Democrats who had voted against the measure two years ago also said they would vote for it this year.

On Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo introduced his bill to both houses of the Legislature, a step he said earlier this year he would not take unless he were confident of a victory. His measure would allow same-sex couples from anywhere in the nation to marry in New York beginning 30 days from passage.

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