By a vote of 38-24, the New York state Senate has decided to uphold marriage discrimination in New York state. How did we get here? In 2006, New York’s highest court issued one of the most derided decisions in recent memory in Hernandez v. Robles. In that ruling, Judge Robert Smith’s decision denied the right to marriage equality. He argued in part that marriage was about protecting children, and that heterosexual families could be formed accidentally and therefore were more fragile and needed the protection of the institution of marriage. Chief Judge Judith Kaye called the decision a “mishap,” and several legal commentators have ridiculed the irrationality of this decision.
But we New Yorkers believed that our progressive state would not be thrown into the wilderness by a sorely mistaken Court of Appeals. Our leaders expressed support for marriage, in every body but the Senate. In 2008, with the strong financial support of the LGBT community, the Democrats took the state Senate. Yet it was a pyrrhic victory, as the Senate became the laughingstock of a nation inured to legislative malfeasance from California to Illinois.
