Christine Quinn gave her State of the City address today. (Photo: NY1)

Today, City Council Speaker and likely 2013 mayoral candidate Christine Quinn won her lawsuit against the Bloomberg administration's policy of asking single adults seeking space in homeless shelters to prove they have no alternative housing. In a statement on the court decision, Ms. Quinn called it a "tremendous victory" against a "wrong-headed policy."

“Today’s Court ruling declaring the Department of Homeless Services’ eligibility requirements for single homeless adults unlawful is a tremendous victory and I commend the Court for its action," Ms. Quinn said. "This was a wrong-headed policy that put a burden of proof on people who could least shoulder it."

Ms. Quinn normally enjoys a rather cozy relationship with City Hall and this lawsuit was the first time the City Council sued the Bloomberg administration during Ms. Quinn's six year tenure as Council speaker.

Ms. Quinn's suit specifically accused the Bloomberg administration of ignoring requirements to notify the public and allow comment before making the policy change.

"The Court’s confirmation that policy changes such as this one must be subject to public notice and comment will ensure that we will be able to work with DHS to create a new policy that will protect, not hurt, the City’s homeless. Moreover, this decision is a victory for all New Yorkers, because it reaffirms that the administration cannot ignore Charter provisions that require agencies to be transparent and accountable to the public," Ms. Quinn said.

When news of the suit first broke last November, DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond told the New York Times the administration adequately allowed the policy to be reviewed.

“We gave two weeks’ notification to Legal Aid,” Mr. Diamond said. “I testified in front of the City Council for several hours and answered all of their questions. We are participating in a judicial review of the policy. We think we have provided an opportunity for people who are concerned to review the policy."

The Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless worked with the City Council in the lawsuit. Ms. Quinn's press release about the court decision also included statements from Coalition for the Homeless Senior Policy Analyst Patrick Markee and Steven Banks, Attorney-in-Chief of The Legal Aid Society.

"The Court's decision puts a stop to the Department of Homeless Services' misguided and dangerous plan to erect new bureaucratic barriers at the shelter door," Mr. Markee said. "It should not have taken a judge to stop the City from implementing this dangerous policy."

"We greatly appreciate the leadership of the Speaker and the City Council in this matter,” Mr. Banks said.

Ms. Quinn, who is widely expected to earn Mayor Michael Bloomberg's endorsement in the race to succeed him has stressed the lawsuit doesn't indicate a strain in her relationship with City Hall.

"It says nothing about my relationship with the mayor,” she told the Times. “It says that we have an issue where the mayor and his administration and I disagree.”

Update -- DHS Commissioner Diamond sent the following statement on the ruling:

“Today’s ruling focused only on the administrative process used to communicate the eligibility procedure for single adults entering the City’s shelter system. Judge Gische’s disappointing decision does not undermine the City’s strong reasons for developing this common sense procedure, nor does it make any determinations about its legality other than ruling on the method used to issue it. The City plans to appeal the decision.”

Same-sex marriage supporters marching on Washington in 2009. (Photo: Getty)

On Sunday, as Governor Andrew Cuomo, Senator Chuck Schumer and over 400 other guests looked on, Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell married John Banta, his partner of over three decades. For Mr. O’Donnell, the wedding was the culmination of a more-than-four-year fight—which included numerous lawsuits and the introduction of five bills to the State Legislature—that finally resulted in same-sex marriage’s finally being legalized in New York last June.

“I began this battle when Eliot Spitzer was elected governor,” Mr. O’Donnell told The Observer. “I used to wake up every day thinking about how many votes I had or didn’t have. Now it’s like, what do I do now?”

As New York both literally and figuratively moves on from the marriage equality fight, gay rights activists are looking to see same-sex marriage become legal in other states. They also have a whole host of other demands with respect to support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth, not to mention workplace discrimination. With the fractious climate in the current American electoral landscape and the unique nature of the gay rights voting bloc, they may have an uphill battle to accomplish these goals.
It’s difficult to quantify the precise number of gay residents in the United States because the census counts only households reporting as same-sex couples. This leaves out single gay people as well as straight gay rights supporters. That being said, the gay rights contingent is still clearly smaller than the blocs supporting religious or racial minority groups. In the most recent census two years ago, the government found each state has an average of just 0.773 percent of households reporting as gay couples.

However many gay citizens there are, unlike other blocs they are not united in terms of class, racial or gender identity. Beyond the marriage issue, there isn’t necessarily a single unifying cause for the gay bloc to get behind.

Kerry Lux Eleveld, a writer who covered the White House for gay magazine The Advocate during the first two years of the Obama administration, pointed out that it is “difficult to speak with authority about the concerns of gay voters because of how diverse they are. It’s not a single set of concerns.”

Despite their relatively small numbers and lack of a single issue, Ms. Eleveld said supporters of gay rights have managed to remain influential by being vocal and politically engaged.

“I think the LGBT voting bloc is a powerful force in many ways,” Ms. Eleveld said. “In terms of voting, as well as pamphleting, canvassing, volunteering and also in terms of donations.”

During the 2008 election, President Obama received nearly $140,000 from organizations associated with gay and lesbian issues. Last May, Politico reported the president’s re-election was “banking on gay donors to make up the cash it’s losing from other groups of wealthy supporters who have been alienated and disappointed” by President Obama’s first term. The president, perhaps mindful of this fact, included 15 gay people on his finance committee compared with just one in 2008. So far in his first term, President Obama has repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy, called for the repeal of the federal ban on same-sex marriage and pushed the Office of Personnel Management to rewrite regulations banning discrimination of transgender federal workers.

Though President Obama may be counting on gay voters, many of them don’t seem to feel they can count on him. In June, the president faced large protests from crowds eager to see him do more to promote same-sex marriage outside a fund-raiser for gay supporters in New York.

According to Ms. Eleveld, while President Obama has done a lot to support the concerns of gay rights voters, there’s a lot more that could be done for gay, lesbian and transgender citizens at the federal level.

“The administration, in some cases, has been responsive and has had a good record on LGBT concerns so far, but there’s always more that President Obama and the White House could do,” Ms. Eleveld said. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that Obama could help move the conversation forward on marriage equality nationwide, but there’s a very large portion of the lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender community that, their number-one concern heading into the Obama administration was a Fair Employment Act and advancing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. It’s something that really could be advanced now if the president used his executive authority and issued an executive order.”

An executive order barring discrimination against transgender federal workers would be much harder for subsequent administrations to reverse than the Office of Personnel Management’s rewritten regulations. While the gay marriage debate captivated the attention of the American people with celebrity supporters and, according to a Pew Research Center survey released last fall, nearly 46 percent of voters in favor of marriage equality, the issues facing transgender people and the employment discrimination debate are much less widely discussed.

“The vast majority of Americans don’t know that gays and lesbians can still be fired in 29 states because of their sexual orientation and that transgender Americans can get fired in more than 30 states simply for their gender identity without any legal recourse,” Ms. Eleveld said. “I think there’s still a lot of education and awareness that needs to be promoted on behalf of transgender issues.”

Election year politics means President Obama needs to appeal to swing voters and turn red states blue, which may make him even less likely than he’s been in the past to cater to the needs of gay rights supporters. Assemblyman O’Donnell, who said he advises lawmakers in other states considering same-sex marriage law, acknowledged that supporting gay causes can be difficult for politicians.

“I undertook this in the political process, I got some bruises for it,” he said. “Trust me, it wasn’t all smooth sailing, but you can get it accomplished.”

For her part, Ms. Eleveld thinks the president would be wise to lean on gay supporters for his re-election campaign.

“From an electoral standpoint, this is, generally speaking, a very loyal and progressive voting bloc for Democrats, but votes aren’t the only thing that matters. This is a group of people that certainly put in a lot of time and energy into volunteering. … It’s also a group that has donated a lot of money to the Democratic Party,” Ms. Eleveld said. “I think one of the lessons from the 2010 midterms is that you absolutely have to motivate your base in order to fare well at the polls. I don’t think you can go for the middle at the exclusion of your base. That was an absolute problem for the Democrats at the midterms.”

Based on President Obama’s reported reliance on donations from gay and lesbian supporters, this may indeed be his strategy.

Locally, gay rights supporters may have an easier time since, with marriage equality passed here in New York, they’re focused on initiatives for youth that aren’t necessarily specifically gay causes.

Yetta Kurland, a prominent civil rights attorney in Manhattan and vice president of New York’s chapter of the Stonewall Democrats, said she believes the gay bloc in the Empire State needs to “focus on ensuring
proper accomodations for homeless youth” because “a disproportionate number of those children and youth are LGBT.”

Ms. Kurland also said it’s important to launch education initiatives for parents and students to help keep LGBT youth out of shelters. Mr. O’Donnell agrees that a focus on promoting tolerance is crucial.

“Yes, we have an LGBT teenage population that needs a lot of attention and shelters are obviously first and foremost on that list, but bullying has become very, very important. It is those kids who are not gender conformant who are most likely the targets,” he said. “If you can work seriously on reducing the bullying you may be able to prevent some of that homelessness from occurring, you may prevent kids from running away.”

Mr. O’Donnell authored the anti-bullying Dignity for All Students Act in the Assembly, but he said there’s still much more that needs to be done.

“The next step of Dignity will have to be expanding it, because it doesn’t apply to colleges, which I think it should and there’s also the question of cyberbullying,” he said.

Mr. O’Donnell also agrees that parents must be educated to prevent children from becoming runaways because their families are intolerant of their sexuality.

“You hear these tragedies every day where a kid gets thrown in front of a train, or jumps out of a window, or slices themselves up because of what’s happening to their sense of value and worth,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “Even though Dignity was monumental, there’s still more work that needs to be done.”

hwalker@observer.com