According to a recent Siena poll, 58 percent of New York’s registered voters support gay marriage, while only 36 percent oppose it. Even those demographic groups least likely to back gay marriage — Republicans and those over age 55 — are about evenly split on the issue, according to the poll.

Ross Levi, executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, recently told National Public Radio, “At the end of the day, when the people of New York are on your side — as they are so solidly here — the elected official is doing the right thing and the politically smart thing by standing up for an issue like this — marriage equality.”

“A super-majority of New Yorkers support the freedom to marry and look to Albany to get the job done now,” said Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry. “From Canada to Connecticut, this state’s neighbors have ended the exclusion of committed couples from marriage, and families are helped and no one is hurt. It’s time for New York’s lawmakers to pass the marriage bill that New Yorkers want and families need.”

On a national level, the Obama administration recently overturned the military’s “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which allowed gays and lesbians to serve in the military so long as they didn’t reveal their sexual orientation. The president also directed the Justice Department to stop defending Defense of Marriage Act cases. President Clinton signed that law, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, in 1996.

Throughout the country, we’re seeing slow, steady progress in according gays and lesbians the rights they deserve as productive, law-abiding members of society. Now, not later, is the time for New York to recognize their full rights as citizens and grant them the right to marry.