By Doug Miller
But the court's ruling was applauded in some circles. An arch supporter of the ban is Assemblyman Robert Barra, a Republican from Lynbrook, who said quite frankly that society wasn't ready for an expansion of the definition of marriage. "We don't let polygamy happen," he said Tuesday. "We don't let people marry animals. Where do you draw the line at for something like that?"
And the South Shore's two most influential religious communities, Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, were in lockstep in their support of the ban, which the court ruled is a constitutionally acceptable action by the Legislature.
The Catholic church's stance on the matter is based on the laws of God, which undoubtedly outweigh anything coming out of the New York legislature or courts, said Dennis Poust, a spokesman for the New York State Catholic Conference. "Marriage is a union of a man and a woman for the purpose of raising children," he said. "The church recognizes marriage for what it has always been, and that predates the Catholic church and, really, all of recorded history."
But there are plenty of members of the region's clergy who support and even perform gay marriages who said the ban oversteps personal freedoms. "Yesterday was an unfortunate day for the state of New York," said Rabbi Jason Klein, 31, of Hewlett last Friday. "So far as I'm concerned, there is a separation between church and state, and I don't expect that - short of hurting another person - the state should tell me what, as a religious leader, is or isn't OK."
Klein, who is openly gay, said he has officiated at same-sex marriages, civil unions and commitment ceremonies in the past, and that the differences exist only in what the participants ask for. "Sometimes a same-sex couple wants their ceremony to mirror perfectly in every way what you might find in a heterosexual Jewish marriage," Klein said. "And sometimes the couple, recognizing some of the non-egalitarian history of marriage and Jewish tradition, wants a ceremony that is a departure from that."
Rabbi Paula Jayne Winnig of Temple Sinai in Lawrence called the ruling a blow for loving couples of all stripes. "It is sad for our human community that when we live in an age when so many people flee from making meaningful commitments to their loved ones, that we have courts and legislatures that are making it impossible for people to make legal commitments to those they love," said Winnig in a statement released by the Empire State Pride Agenda. "By blocking gays and lesbians from making their relationships legally binding, we are doing more harm to the already fragile institution of marriage. I look forward to the day when we will celebrate the marriages of all men and all women for the commitments and love they share regardless of the genders of the parties who are marrying."
The ban extends only to couples seeking marriage in the state of New York. Currently, only Massachusetts allows its same-sex residents to be legally married, while Vermont and Connecticut recognize civil unions, including people from out of state who travel there. New York City offers a domestic partnership registry, but gay marriages can not be performed there. And most large corporations, including those based in New York, already offer domestic partnership rights to their employees, including IBM and MetLife Insurance.
A MetLife executive, Amy Posner, lives in Lido Beach with her partner of almost 20 years, Debbie Novak. On Monday she blasted the Court of Appeals' ruling. "What was so shocking about what New York did -- besides the fact that it's New York making a decision that would seem natural from the Supreme Court of Alabama -- if you read the decision, it is blatantly discriminatory..." Posner said. "It actually says that since gay people can't become pregnant accidentally, there is no compelling need for them to able to marry. I think that's insulting to opposite-sex couples who are unable to have children.
"While marriage provides a stable family environment for raising children, it also has an awful lot to do with love, support and a strong community," Posner added. "And it really doesn't matter if you are opposite-sex couples or same-sex couples."
Posner and Novak were civilly united in Vermont, and are confident that their union will continue to be recognized by MetLife. Cathy Marino-Thomas, the co-executive director of Marriage Equality New York, is a Freeport resident who was in Provincetown, Mass., Monday in order to, as she sarcastically put it, "figure out if I'm still legally married."
Marino-Thomas said the issue carried just as much weight for straight New Yorkers as it did for gays and lesbians. "Today it's a ban on same-sex marriage, tomorrow it might be something else," she said. "We all know the law was probably not written to encompass all kinds of families at the time it was written. But the laws were meant to move and grow with society as society moves and grows."
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