NY Gay Marriage Vote: Will Parent’s Day Replace Father’s Day?
New York’s gay marriage battle, which could be decided as early as today, has some people wondering: Will Parent 1 Day replace Father’s or Mother’s day?
On Sunday, while Americans nationwide were busy celebrating the importance of having a father in a child’s life, same-sex marriage advocates were putting pressure on the state Senate to legally endorse the idea that a child can grow up healthy with two mothers and no father.
“It is ironic that perhaps the most intense lobbying for and against same-sex ‘marriage’ has occurred between two special days on our national calendar, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day,” observed the New Yorker’s Family Research Foundation (NYFRF) on Saturday. “Days in which the culture innately recognizes and acknowledges that each gender parent makes a unique contribution to the rearing of the children.
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“We would never dream of referring to these special days as ‘Parent 1’ and ‘Parent 2’ Day. Each parent, mom and dad, provides something that the other cannot, first to the conception, and later the rearing of a child,” said NYFRF. “Same-sex relationships always, by design, deny children either a mother or father.”
Hundreds of gay rights activists took to the streets of Manhattan Sunday to rally support for the Marriage Equality Act, the same-sex marriage bill introduced by Democrat New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
“[W]e need to deconstruct these laws that are unjust and create one that gives everyone the right to marry,” said Jackie Lewis, a gay rights activist, reported CBS New York.
“God made people gay, so them being allowed to marry is not only a moral right, but it’s a civil rights,” she asserted.
However, not far away at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York prayed from the pulpit that “marriage stays between a man and a woman in the state of New York.”
“Any presumption to redefine that sacred vocabulary, I’m afraid is at our common peril,” Dolan said during Sunday’s prayer service at the New York City cathedral.
The New York Archbishop told reporters after the service that: “Our strong convictions are not anti anybody, but simply pro marriage.
“We would just as vigorously defend marriage from a demand by a heterosexual, or anybody else, to redefine the very nature of marriage to accommodate a relationship beyond that of one man and one woman,” said Dolan.
The same-sex marriage bill – which is being jammed through the New York State Legislature by Cuomo, who only introduced the bill last Tuesday – was passed by the Assembly last Wednesday by an 80-63 vote.
Now it awaits its fate at the hands of the Republican-majority Senate, where an unofficial vote count finds a 31-31 tie. Same-sex marriage advocates need only one more vote to redefine marriage in New York. There are at least two undecided Republican senators, including reportedly Sen. Mark Grisanti of New York Senate District 60.
The New York Senate has until 11:59 p.m. Monday to decide on the same-sex marriage bill before the legislative session ends.
If New York passes the bill, then it will be the most populous state to legalize same-sex marriage. The other states that recognize gay marriage are: Iowa, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire. The District of Columbia also recognizes same-sex marriage.
“As the New York State Senate weighs the long-term societal implications of same-sex ‘marriage,’ New Yorker’s Family Research Foundation is hopeful that senators will remember that both mothers and fathers are important to a child’s upbringing. NYFRF believes that state public policy in regard to the definition of marriage should reflect this truth.”
