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h/t to my favorite carpetbagging tax-delinquent heterosupremecist theocrat Gary Randall for keeping me up to date on the haps in NY 
Governor Paterson says he’s secured a commitment by Senate leaders that there will be a vote on the marriage bill during the Nov 16-17 special legislative session by the end of the year. The Assembly passed the marriage equality bill months ago and Paterson has promised to sign it if it makes it through the Senate.
Update: The Senate has adjourned until Tuesday at a time yet to be determined. Not surprisingly, there’s some doubt as to when the vote will really happen. I’ve been informed by Blend reader Stephen that the AP video below is misleading because the Patterson segment is actually from a week ago. Sure enough, it was from 11/11/09. You can watch the unedited video here, and hear the Governor say that he will put the bill on the Nov 16-17 agenda, but that the only real time commitment made by Senate leadership is to debate the bill and take a vote by the end of the year. FYI here’s a WNYC story posted this morning on the subject.
Who knows when/if the Senate will actually vote on the marriage bill. But if they do get around to it, you can watch the live Senate debate here (I’ve removed the video window I had up earlier because it very annoyingly starts playing automatically.).
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Yeah, wazzupwith all of the helpful PSAs folks like Gary Randall and Mike Hein are dishing lately?
Think Pam outta give them a guest spot, so they can give us more of these announcements?
well they’re both between gigs nowso they’ve got nothing better to do than scour the intertubes for us. :)
Good luck New YOrk
It is a dead issueDiaz and two or three others will go over to the Republicans to oppose it
If so, I want them on record
Outdated informationYour Diaz observation is based on outdated reports from January, before the power struggle in June and the appointment of a Lt. Gov. a couple of months ago. The Diaz threat was an attempt to block a vote entirely. The Senate leadership seems to have moved beyond that issue and has agreed to have a vote before the end of the year. Diaz will certainly vote no, but he has recently said he will not be joining the GOP over it. In any event, Lurleen is right about smoking out the no votes.
The glee in your subject line is also gratuitous. We already know that you prefer a vote on GENDA. Understood.
Where the hell is GENDA?Oh, that’s right, basic civil rights for trans people are unimportant to New York state legislators.
So, at least with regards to LGBT civil rights, we’re at least talking of a marriage bill. But, when it comes to the human rights of employment, housing, and public accommodation for trans people, we’re not having a discussion at all. GENDA has been dead in New York for this session for quite awhile now.
What is the story there?I haven’t heard a thing as to where it’s buried or why. If anyone has some detailed knowledge on the subject, it would be great to illuminate the scene.
ENDAI imagine–without having any inside information–that the thinking is to see what happens with ENDA in Congress. If ENDA passes, GENDA becomes a much easier vote for state senators. We aren’t exactly talking about a bunch of profiles in courage here!
The school anti-bullying bill is stuck in the dysfunctional state senate too. And I think it’s more pressing than either of the other two bills, if we must play comparative victimization.
The governor, it seems, is pushing hard for the marriage bill because it would be a very high profile victory (the others wouldn’t generate much publicity) and would therefore help him try to begin to rebuild his image in advance of next year’s re-election campaign. It’s my understanding that the groups pitched all three bills to him at his invitation at the beginning of this session.
The truth is that none of these bills may pass until after the 2010 elections. The state senate is so closely divided that it doesn’t seem capable of doing much of anything except arguing over which members get bigger offices and larger staffs. These are the latter-day Senecas who were locking doors on each other, turning lights out on each other, and holding competing, do-nothing sessions in June.
I’ve given up hopeI’ve given up hope for GENDA, this year or ever, because it’s obvious to me the Empire State Pride Agenda and the politicians in Albany don’t care a half eaten fig for the gender variant people of New York State. I hear lip service and see no real action from either group. It’s 2002 all over again.
I’m fighting to keep my cynicism from degenerating into bitterness. Being out of work for most of a year already makes the battle that much harder.
The political reality is that ESPA doesn’t fight for trans people when there’s a “bigger” prize for them in the way of marriage equality. The same goes for Gov Paterson and ESPA’s allies in the New York State Senate. The marriage equality fight brings in bucks. Fighting for GENDA, brings in much less, if anything at all. The gender variant people in New York will just have to get used to being the stepchild of the LGB(t) community here.
my intuition isthat GENDA advance isn’t necessarily connected very strongly to marriage legislation advance except that both subjects keep the light shining on LGBT needs in general and thus potentiate each other. I know absolutely nothing about the situation in NY, so for all I know you are correct. On the other hand, I know that in MA there has been real hesitancy in the legislature to pass the T civil rights bill. This is essentially the same group of people who voted to kill the anti-equality marriage amendment a few years ago, then repealed the old anti-miscegenation laws that kept out-of-staters from coming to MA to wed. We may see GENDA and marriage equality as all of a piece, but I don’t think legislators necessarily do. In MA they were forced to face the marriage question only because of the landmark court Goodridge court ruling. Now that that question is settled, they have no similar court decision compelling them to be good human beings and get on with GENDA. It’s harder to get them to move forward when there is no court ruling leading/embarrassing them.
I think that the vote is a useless gesturegiven that we will lose and thereby hand yet another victory to be claimed by the religious right.
When I said that it was a dead issue, I did not mean having the vote but the issue itself.
We do not have the votes to win.
We really do not need to have another defeat right after Maine. It weakens our political perception
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