Source: Newsday, Long Island Catholic, NY1, Catskill News

NY marriage rulings

In a column in The Long Island Catholic, Murphy said the governor "has decided to circumvent the legislature, the courts and any testing of the will of the people" when he issued the administrative order.

The column was published along with a similar joint letter signed by eight New York bishops as a poll was released that shows a slim majority of New Yorkers support the governor's order.

After a series of court decisions, the governor told state agencies on May 14 that the agencies must recognize marriages from other jurisdictions. It instructed the agencies to recognize same sex marriages performed in other locations, including Massachusetts and California -- the only states with legalized gay marriages -- and Canada.

Murphy called the order "unseemly and indefensible."

But according to the latest Quinnipiac poll released Thursday, voters support Paterson's decision 53 to 40 percent, but say he should not have been the one to make the decision, NY1 reports.

By 55 to 30 percent, they say the decision should be made by the state legislature.

This is an issue of equality, an issue of equal rights before the law, Ginny Apuzzo, chairwoman of the LGBTQ Center of the Hudson Valley, told Catskill News.

"My sense is that that education is taking hold in New York. New Yorkers by and large are very fair minded people," Apuzzo said.

She added, "the community is committed to do the kind of education that will bring those statistics higher and higher until the issue of marriage is firmly resolved in this state."

Erin Duggan, a spokeswoman for Paterson, denied the governor was sidestepping democracy, and said he was merely explaining what a recent court ruling meant for New York State government.

A separate letter published by the Catholic newspaper and signed by Murphy, Cardinal Edward Egan, and the six other Catholic bishops of New York also criticizes the governor's decision. That letter claims that "the union of one man and one woman" is "consistent with biology and natural law, and should be obvious to all."

Using scare quotes around the term, the "bishops" say in their joint letter that "'Same-sex marriage' furthers a societal disconnect between procreation and marriage while promoting the notion that a nontraditional family structure serves a child as well as a traditional one."

"Sexual intimacy between persons of the same sex does not pass muster," Murphy wrote in his individual column for the newspaper of the Diocese of Rockville Centre. Like the joint letter, he suggests that procreation is the only reason for the state to grant civil marriages.

Homosexual relationships "do not serve the common good. They cannot do so because they contradict biological teleology and the natural law," Murphy wrote.

He said, "I fail to understand how" a homosexual union "can be called marriage. ... No matter how much some may wish to apply the term 'marriage,' it does not fit because it fails the test of truth and authenticity."

David Buckel, chief counsel for Lambda Legal, a gay rights group, criticized Murphy's comments. "We live in the United States of America and he can't impose his views on others and he's got to respect that line if he's going to be an American."

This week's Quinnipiac poll found a wide discrepancy along party lines in attitudes toward marriage equality. 64 percent of Democrats supported the governor's order, while 57 percent of Republicans oppose it. More than 50 percent of Independents also said they support it.

The poll found that 42 percent believe same-sex marriage should be legal, 31 percent favor civil unions, but not marriage, and 21 percent say there should be no legal recognition of same-sex unions.

Full article: Bishop Murphy: Paterson 'just wrong' on gay marriage | Newsday
Statement on ‘same-sex marriage’ by New York State bishops | Long Island Catholic
The governor and same sex ‘marriages’ | Long Island Catholic
Poll: NYers Support Bloomberg For Governor, Gay Marriage | NY1
New York voters back Gov on gay marriage, college poll finds | Catskill News