When Republican State Senator Jim Alesi was introduced at the Human Rights Campaign party Tuesday night, celebrating last week’s passage of same-sex marriage, the audience exploded with cheers and applause.
“That’s exactly what it sounded like when I went to church on Sunday,” he said. The audience burst into laughter. Read More
One day after Andrew Cuomo said he won’t push for a vote on legalizing same-sex marriage until he has enough votes to pass it, the Human Rights Campaign releases another video from a supporter, who says, “let’s make marriage equality the law in New York, and let’s do it now.”
Today’s HRC video features former CNN anchor Larry King who has gotten married, and divorced, eight times.
Video after the jump. Read More
Governor Andrew Cuomo is featured in robocalls urging New Yorkers to pressure their local lawmakers to support same-sex marriage.
Calling it a “pressing issue of basic fairness and civil rights,” the Democratic governor is careful not to single out any particular group or legislator as enemies on this issue. Rather, he says, “This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. It is a question of New York going forward or backward.”
The governor’s top aides have been coordinating with same-sex marriage advocates for months. Advocates, like those at the Human Rights Campaign, have kept the conversation from breaking down into the kind of hardline rhetoric that marked the run-up to the 2009 vote in the State Senate, which failed 38-24.
Here’s Cuomo’s script. Read More
Former President Clinton comes out in support of same-sex marriage, a sign of how far into the mainstream the LGBT agenda has become. (It was Clinton, after all, who signed things like the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states the right to refuse same-sex marriages performed in other states; and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the military rule from the 1990s whose repeal earlier this year was cheered as a major LGBT victory).
In a statement released by the Human Rights Campaign, Clinton said:
Our nation’s permanent mission is to form a ‘more perfect union’ – deepening the meaning of freedom, broadening the reach of opportunity, strengthening the bonds of community. That mission has inspired and empowered us to extend rights to people previously denied them. Every time we have done that, it has strengthened our nation. Now we should do it again, in New York, with marriage equality. For more than a century, our Statue of Liberty has welcomed all kinds of people from all over the world yearning to be free. In the 21st century, I believe New York’s welcome must include marriage equality.
As with the videos from HRC, the message is positive, points no fingers at those who are opposing it, and paints the issue as an expansion of freedom.
Update: Chelsea Clinton will join activists at a phone bank inside 1199 SEIU headquarters, around 7 p.m. tonight, pushing for the cause. Tonight kicks off bi-weekly calling sessions, notes Liz Benjamin.
