The state Department of Correctional Services is rewriting its rules for inmates’ conjugal visits in the wake of last week’s historic legalization of gay marriage.
Gay inmates married in New York will be allowed to receive the same conjugal visits — officially called “family reunions” — that their married heterosexual cellmates enjoy, officials said.
But the department said it doesn’t anticipate the new law to increase the number of requests for the visits. In 2008, then-Gov. David Paterson signed an executive order directing the department to honor civil unions and out-of-state same-sex marriages.
Gay inmates were also made eligible for furloughs if their spouse or civil union partner was terminally ill, a privilege granted to heterosexual couples.
There is one pending conjugal-visit application from a married lesbian inmate at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester, according to department spokesman Peter Cutler.
A conjugal visit typically allows an inmate to spend 48 hours of privacy with a spouse in a special, kitchen-equipped “residential unit.” The prison also supplies condoms.