Beyond New York, gay marriage faces hurdles

Nicholas Confessore of The New York Times looks at the movement beyond New York state:

After a string of defeats in recent years from California to Maine, the movement to legalize same-sex marriage is hoping its unexpected victory in New York will revive efforts to legalize gay weddings around the nation.

But the movement’s success there could prove difficult to replicate. Twenty-nine states have constitutional bans on same-sex marriage, while 12 others have laws against it. And many of those states where support for same-sex marriage is high have already acted on the issue.

Officials at several gay-rights organizations said they would seek to move quickly in Maryland, where legislation to legalize same-sex marriage was shelved in February by Democratic leaders concerned that it lacked the support to pass.

Advocates also said they hoped to resuscitate a marriage bill that died in the Rhode Island legislature this year.

Gay-rights groups are likely to seek ballot initiatives next year to overturn bans on same-sex marriage in Maine, where the Legislature approved a same-sex marriage law in 2009 that voters almost immediately turned back, and in Oregon.

Advocates hope, in the longer term, to win the legalization of same-sex marriage in Delaware and New Jersey, two states where Democrats control the legislatures, as well as in Pennsylvania. “The fundamental issue here is American public opinion,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay-rights organization. “The outcome in New York will be tremendously impactful in shaping the rest of the debate.”

Perhaps the most striking shift in Albany was the role played by Republican lawmakers in the State Senate. Republican senators voted unanimously against same-sex marriage two years ago, when they were in the minority; this year, with a majority in the chamber, they not only allowed the marriage bill to come to the floor, but also provided the final votes necessary to approve it. The decision by 4 Republicans to join 29 Democrats to push the measure through the 62-seat Senate marked the first time in the nation that a legislative body controlled by Republicans approved either same-sex marriages or civil unions, advocates said.

That shift was precipitated by the emergence of a growing constituency of pro-gay-marriage operatives and donors in the Republican Party, whose direction on social issues is still largely set by its culturally conservative base.

“There is an important change going on among Republicans and conservatives,” said Kenneth B. Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.

Mr. Mehlman, who acknowledged his own homosexuality after his tenure at the national committee had ended, was among a group of Republicans who helped raise money from prominent Republican donors to support the same-sex marriage effort in Albany. Those donors underwrote much of the cost of the same-sex marriage advocates’ advertising and lobbying campaigns.

Among increasing numbers of conservatives and Republicans, he said, there is the conviction “that freedom to marry is consistent with conservative values.”