Comparing his crusade to legalize gay marriage to the country’s epic civil-rights struggles, Gov. Paterson yesterday hitched his falling star to a controversial, and likely doomed, bill to allow same-sex unions in New York.
“We have all felt the pain and the insult of hatred. That is why we are all standing here today . . . We stand to tell the world we want marriage equality in New York state,” he said.
If the measure passes, New York would become the fifth state — after Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont — to allow gay marriage.
But that’s a very big if.
Religious leaders will fight hard to defeat the bill. Archbishop Timothy Dolan spoke against gay marriage Wednesday — the very day he was installed as head of the powerful New York Archdiocese.
The bill also faces an uphill state Senate battle. Several members of Paterson’s party have come out swinging against it, including Ruben Diaz of The Bronx.
“It’s a challenge the governor is sending to every religious person in New York, and the time for us has come for us to accept the challenge,” said Diaz, an evangelical pastor.
Several other Senate Democrats — whose party has only a two-vote majority — have said they oppose a same-sex marriage bill.
Even some supporters have questioned the wisdom of bringing it to a vote, fearing failure would ruin chances for future legislation.
But Paterson yesterday insisted, “Civil rights don’t wait for the right time.”
Paterson — whose poll approval ratings are at a historic low — dismissed speculation that he was backing the bill to draw attention from his widely panned $132 billion budget plan. He said he has been an outspoken advocate on the issue since 1994, and noted he championed the same-sex marriage legislation in 2007 that failed in the state Senate.
“If I didn’t introduce the bill, you could get up and say, ‘Is the reason you’re not introducing the bill because of your lack of popularity after the budget?’ ” he said.
Paterson, dismissed criticism from Dolan, saying, “I was christened Catholic . . . But this is a civil government.”
Standing by Paterson was Mayor Bloomberg, who said, “I don’t think the government should be in the business of telling us who we can or who we cannot marry.”
Also on hand was City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, as well as the bill’s sponsors, Sen. Tom Duane and Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, all of whom are gay Democrats.
The bill will give gay couples 1,324 rights that they are currently denied, Paterson said.
They include the right not to testify against a spouse and to automatically get a late partner’s pension. Other rights are more trivial, like one that gives the spouses of horse-track stakeholders free passes for races.
Meanwhile, Lee Miringoff, a pollster at Marist College, said that the governor is “trying to develop a constituency” by lending support to the bill, “but ultimately, the economy is where things will matter for him in terms of public support.”