New York same-sex couples start their wedding plans, celebrate new law
Same-sex couples and gay rights groups in Central New York and across the state applauded the 33-29 vote that made New York the sixth, and largest, state to approve same-sex marriage. Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed it into law just before midnight Friday.
All five of Central New York’s Republican senators voted no; the lone Democrat, David Valesky, voted yes.
Same-sex couples who have wanted to marry for years have had their hopes dashed before. In 2007 and 2009, the state Assembly approved a bill but the state Senate did not. Then, on June 15, the Assembly voted again, and it was a nail-biter until late Friday on what the closely divided Senate would do.
Since 2008 New York has recognized same-sex marriages performed in other states, giving same-sex couples the same legal rights in New York as opposite-sex married couples. When Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage in 2004, many New Yorkers got married there. Others have been married in Connecticut, which first had civil unions and then same-sex marriage in 2008.
But some same-sex couples said they wanted to be married at home.
“I’ve watched people do it all my life. They have these huge formal weddings, which I’ve loved,” she said. “I just want to have my seven people in my wedding party and wear a traditional tuxedo and my partner wear a traditional gown.”
n churches where gay marriage has been accepted for years, clergy members celebrated the new law.
“I would just say, ‘Hallelujah,’” said the Rev. Jean Wahlstrom of the May Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church in Syracuse. “It’s a long-awaited stand for justice and equal rights. It affirms family values that are grounded in love and not in hatred.”
Becky Clifford and her wife, Terri Clifford, of Liverpool, were married last year in Connecticut. They already have all the rights and protections of marriage in New York, but they plan to renew their vows in a ceremony on their first anniversary at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Liverpool.
“There are always going to be people who don’t look at us as usual, and that’s OK,” Clifford said. “There are not going to be as many questions. When I mention my wife, people aren’t going to say, ‘Is that legal?’”
