Marriage Equality Sunday!

This Sunday there will be weddings and celebrations across New York State. To stay involved and find out details, click here!

First Day of Marriage Equality Less Than 72 Hours Away!

Get Tickets Today!

New York City, Come Cruise the Hudson!

Music by DJ CHRIS PADILLA

Entertainment by MISS PEPPERMINT

Witness one of New York's First Gay Wedding Ceremonies aboard The Queen of Hearts!

Buffet Dinner with champagne toast

and wedding cake Included. Cash Bar.

MARRIAGE EQUALITY CELEBRATIONS IN NEW YORK ON SUNDAY JULY 24th

To register to volunteer go to http://www.tinyurl.com/volunteermeny

Sunday, July 24, 2011, over 14 years of hard work by our volunteers and partner organizations comes to fruition when New York State allows the first of thousands of LGBT couples to marry in the Empire State. CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE WEDDING REGISTRY! Some couples that MENY will be highlighting on their journey to get married are: Kitty Lambert & Cheryle Rudd of Buffalo, NY Robert Lassegue & Jose Manuel Reyes Negrete of Long Island, NY Kawane Harris & Jeanette Coleman of New York, NY Norma Virola & Crystal Gonzalez of Brooklyn, NY Craig Francisco & David Hind of Queens, NY Maria Romagnuolo & Wendy Bloom of Staten Island, NY Interested in letting us know about your wedding? E-mail us! MENY will continue to serve you as a statewide grassroots volunteer organization with public education, actions, coalition building, and media campaigns until marriage equality is reached on a national level. Make sure to stay tuned for the upcoming Annual Wedding Marches in New York State and around the United States. Interested in organizing a wedding march in your state? E-mail us! While much remains to be done, today we can all take a moment to CELEBRATE! Ron Zacchi Executive Director MARRIAGE EQUALITY CELEBRATIONS IN NEW YORK ON SUNDAY JULY 24th Register to volunteer

Getting married?

Here is a list of some of the clerks' offices that we know will be open on Sunday, July 24. New York City Clerk's offices across the City: 8:30 am - 4:30 pm 2 Hours left to APPLY: Please note that New York City will be using a lottery system to select couples. There will be 400 slots available for the Manhattan City Clerk's Office; 112 slots available each for the Brooklyn and Queens City Clerk's Offices; 98 slots available for The Bronx City Clerk's Office; and 42 slots available for the Staten Island City Clerk's Office. More information is available here: http://www.cityclerk.nyc.gov/html/marriage/lottery.shtml Binghamton Hours of Binghamton's Clerk's office: 10:00 am - 2:00 pm Buffalo Hours of Buffalo Clerk's office: 10:00 am - 1:00 pm Greenburgh Couples choosing this option must e-mail, Judith A. Beville, Greenburgh Town Clerk Ithaca Hours of Ithaca Clerk's office: 2:00 pm - 6:00 pm North Hempstead North Hempstead Clerk's office will be open by appointment. 516-869-7650 Rochester Hours of Rochester Clerk's office: 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm Syracuse Hours of Syracuse's Clerk's office: 10:00 am - 2:00 pm Open Sunday, July 24, 2011: Albany Brighton Brookhaven Greenburgh (They have the date wrong in their posting, but they still say Sunday.) Kingston Niagara Falls Shandaken Watertown By Appointment Only: Auburn Hudson Lewiston Niagara North Tonawanda Woodstock State law requires a 24-hour waiting period from the issuance of a marriage license before a marriage can occur, unless a waiver is obtained by the applicants. Some localities will have judges available to waive the waiting period. Contact your local clerk for more information. Here is a list of helpful FAQs from New York State. Here is a list of helpful FAQs from New York City. If you are considering getting married, you may want to review these guides from our friends at Lambda Legal and NYLCU . Any questions, feel free to email info@meny.us and we will do our best to get back to you asap.

Their Long Wait Is Over

The New York Times profiles three long-time couples who are planning to marry on Sunday, the first day of marriage equality in New York. One of the couples is Kitty Lambert and Cheryle Rudd, who will hold their wedding at Niagara Falls, which will be lit in rainbow colors.

Thanks for Your Service, but You Still Can't Have Marriage Benefits

The end of Don't Ask Don't Tell may be imminent, but that doesn't mean full equality for gay and lesbian servicemen and women. Military personnel with same-sex spouses will not be eligible for the same benefits as their heterosexual comrades. The News-Tribune:

The Pentagon says the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act – which defines marriage as a legal union between a man and a woman – prohibits the Defense Department from extending those benefits to gay couples, even if they are married legally in certain states. That means housing allowances and off-base living space for gay service members with partners could be decided as if they were living alone. Base transfers would not take into account their spouses. If two gay service members are married to each other they may be transferred to two different states or regions of the world. For heterosexual couples, the military tries to avoid that.

Gay activists and even some commanders say the discrepancy will create a two-tier system in an institution built on uniformity.

Read more.

Cuomo to Anti-Gay Town Clerk: Buh-Bye

Laura Fortusky, the town clerk of Barker, New York, has resigned from her position rather than issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Governor Cuomo's response? Don't let the door hit you on the way out: "The law is the law. When you enforce the laws of the state, you don't get to pick and choose which laws," he told the Daily News. "You don't get to say, 'I like this law and I'll enforce this law, or I don't like this law and I won't enforce this law' -- you can't do that. So if you can't enforce the law, then you shouldn't be in that position."

Edie Windsor Asks for Summary Judgment

Lawyers for Edie Windsor have asked filed papers in the Southern District of New York asking for summary judgment in her lawsuit challenging DOMA. New York Law Journal:

Ms. Windsor and [Thea] Spyer were companions for more than 40 years and were married in Canada in 2007, a union recognized by New York. When Ms. Spyer died in 2009, her estate would have passed to Ms. Windsor tax free but for the federal government's recognition of marriage as only between a man and a woman.

The ground has shifted substantially since Ms. Windsor filed suit in November seeking a refund of $363,000 she has paid in taxes.

Her lawyers filed their summary judgment motion on June 24, the same day Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed the Marriage Equality Act legalizing same-sex marriages.

Before New York's acceptance of gay marriage, the Obama administration on Feb. 23, 2011, informed Congress it would no longer defend §3 of DOMA because it believed, in the words of U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., that "classifications based on sexual orientation warrant heightened scrutiny and that, as applied to same-sex couples legally married under state law, §3 is unconstitutional."

The change in position provided a boost to Ms. Windsor as well as the seven gay and lesbian plaintiffs in Pederson v. Office of Personnel Management, 10-cv-1750, a District of Connecticut case challenging the failure to recognize lawful same-sex marriages for the purposes of statutes governing defined benefit pension plans and state retirement plans, laws governing benefits for federal retirees, the Family Medical Leave Act, the Internal Revenue Code and the Social Security Laws.

Magistrate Judge James C. Francis IV is due to respond to the motion by August 15.

Wedding Crashers

The National Organization for Marriage is doubling down on its demands for a referendum in New York to overturn the marriage equality law, sending a fund-raising letter to their followers in which they announce the Let the People Vote! campaign. The campaign launches July 24, the first day that the state will issue marriage licenses to gay couples, with rallies in Buffalo, Albany, Rochester, and New York City. Although July 24 falls on a Sunday, marriage bureaus in a number of municipalities, including New York City, have said they will open in order to accommodate the expected rush of couples seeking to marry.

Brian, Maggie: no gift bag for you.

Nassau D.A. Won't Take Any Guff

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice has a message to town clerks who might be considering refusing marriage licenses to same-sex couples: don't even think about it. In a letter to the county's city and town clerks, the D.A. wrote:

The Marriage Equality Act provides that an application for a marriage license cannot be denied on the grounds that the applicant parties are of the same sex and the law affords no discretion to public officials charged with granting marriage licenses. Therefore, any such refusal may be subject to criminal prosecution.

“The religious exemptions in the Marriage Equality Act are inapplicable to town and city clerks serving in their license-granting roles, and a public official’s intentional refusal to issue marriage licenses to qualified same-sex couples may constitute Official Misconduct, a Class A misdemeanor [italics added] defined in section 195.00 of the New York State Penal Law.

Opposition to Marriage Equality Shrinking?

Greg Sargent points to new poll from National Journal which shows that 56% of "Republican insiders" would just as soon avoid the issue of marriage equality. "Republicans in positions of influence just want the issue to go away," he writes.

But more to the point, [the poll is] also evidence that the intensity of whatever opposition remains is rapidly dissipating.

Many recent national polls have shown that support for marriage equality is growing. But what’s also interesting is that the opposition, while still present, may be growing less fervent.

Let’s take New York as a test example. Despite the recent passage of a marriage equality bill, support for marriage equality in New York isn’t that much higher than in the country as a whole — it’s currently at 54 percent, according to Quinnipiac, which is similar to the low-50s level of support we see in national polls.

While this is certainly good news, it is no reason for marriage equality supporters to become complacent. For one, voter attitudes in New York are not necessarily representative of the rest of the country. And as the Tea Party has shown, just because the G.O.P. establishment says one thing, it doesn't mean their base will go along with it.

The Slow Fall of DOMA

This week saw two significant developments in the chipping away of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). First, the Obama administration filed a brief in a case in California in which a federal court employee is suing to secure equal health benefits for her wife. The brief contained the most forceful arguments against the constitutionality of DOMA ever made by an office of the federal government. New York Law School professor Arthur S. Leonard notes that it had consequences beyond DOMA: "[The brief] helped to convince the 9th Circuit panel, which was considering Log Cabin Republicans' motion to lift the stay of District Judge Virginia Phillips' injunction against enforcement of the "don't ask, don't tell" military policy, to lift the stay yesterday."

Second, the U.S. Trustee made a surprising move to withdraw his appeal the decision of 20 bankruptcy court judges to reject the Trustee's motion to dismiss a married same-sex couple's joint bankruptcy filing. Leonard again:

Here's the fun part. At the end of the motion filed...on behalf of U.S. Trustee Peter C. Anderson, the Trustee relates that the Debtors were requested to "agree to the withdrawal of the appeal, but Debtors refused." Interesting. The Debtors won the motion, so one would think they would be happy that the appeal has been withdrawn. But withdrawal of the appeal undermines their chance to get the issue up to the 9th Circuit, which perhaps they thought would be a good way to get their challenge to DOMA up to the Supreme Court. Now that seems unlikely.

Read the rest of Leonard's post.

Senate to Hold Hearings on DOMA Repeal

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced yesterday that the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, would hold the first hearings on the proposed repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act "in the coming weeks" (Metro Weekly).

DOJ Brief Supports DOMA Challenge

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a brief last Friday opposing the motion to dismiss a lawsuit by a federal employee who is challenging the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Karen Golinski, a lawyer with the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in California, sued the federal government in order to provide her wife equal health benefits. Metro Weekly's Chris Geidner explains the brief's significance:

Unlike in other cases where DOJ has stopped defending DOMA in accordance with President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder's decision that Section 3 of DOMA -- the federal definition of marriage -- is unconstitutional, DOJ lawyers today made an expansive case in a 31-page filing that DOMA is unconstitutional. Previously, the government had attached the Feb. 23 letter from Holder to House Speaker John Boehner (R) that announced the DOJ position to filings to courts about the decision to stop defending the law, but it had not laid out any more expansive reasoning.

But, for Golinski's case, DOJ did so. In describing why heightened scrutiny applies to classifications based on sexual orientation, for example, the DOJ's lawyers -- in describing how "gays and lesbians have been subject to a history of discrimination" -- write, "The federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals."

Read Geidner's analysis of the brief, which he calls "the single-most persuasive legal argument ever advanced by the United States government in support of equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people."

Marriage Equality FAQ

Questions about New York's new marriage equality law? The New York Civil Liberties Union has answers. Check out their guide, which answers a range of FAQs about SSM.

The Marriage Equality Four

The New York Times considers the political consequences for the four Republican state senators who voted for marriage equality, sealing the bill's passage:

Now, [Mark] Grisanti and the three other Senate Republicans who provided votes necessary to legalize same-sex marriage in New York are confronting the uncertainty of how voters in their districts will react. Voter response will influence the balance of power in the New York Senate, where there are just two more Republicans than Democrats. And the events in New York also have national repercussions: because several Democratic-dominated states have already legalized same-sex marriage, gay-rights advocates increasingly need Republican support if they are to change local laws elsewhere in the country.

Some Republican donors, as well as Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and leaders of the gay-rights movement, have promised to support the re-election campaigns of the four New York lawmakers. But the National Organization for Marriage, a group opposed to same-sex marriage, said it would spend $2 million in an effort to defeat the legislators, and key elements of the senators’ traditional political base have vowed to withdraw support.

Read the whole thing.

Waiting for Justice

An editorial in the The New York Times calls for the end of DOMA, which it describes as "rank[ing] with the most overtly discriminatory laws in the nation’s history":

The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted in 1996 as an election-year wedge issue, signed by President Bill Clinton in one of his worst policy moments. Any Congress with a real respect for personal freedom would repeal it. That, of course, does not describe the current Congress, where many members talk a great deal about freedom but apply it mainly to businesses and gun owners. With legislative repeal not on the horizon, the best hope for ending this legalized bigotry is with the courts.

Read the whole thing.