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Legalizing Gay Marriage In NYC


Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan ordered Victor Robles, the Clerk of the City of New York, on February 4th to stop discriminating against people on the basis of sex in licensing marriages. The next day, Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed to appeal the court order, while for the first time announcing that he supports the right of gay couples to marry. That night, Bloomberg addressed two major gay rights dinners and while his recent conversion to support for gay marriage in principle was applauded, he was bitterly heckled and booed when he said he would appeal the judge’s order.

By February 6, all of Bloomberg’s major potential Democratic opponents for mayor--Council Speaker Gifford Miller, former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, and Congressman Anthony Weiner--condemned his refusal to comply with the court order and the issue of same-sex marriage moved to the center of the 2005 mayor’s race.

Justice Ling-Cohan ruled in a lawsuit brought on behalf of five lesbian and gay couples by the Lambda Legal Defense, a gay and lesbian legal advocacy group, last March. In her ruling, she compared the denial of marriage to gay people to the miscegenation laws that forbade interracial marriage in many states until the United States Supreme Court struck them down in 1967. Indeed, she noted that one of the plaintiffs, Curtis Woolbright, had a white mother who had to move to California from Texas in order to be able to marry a black man in the early 1960s.

Addressing due process and constitutional issues raised by the plaintiffs, Ling-Cohan ruled that “the words ‘husband,’ ‘wife,’ ‘groom’ and ‘bride,’ as they appear in the Domestic Relations Law shall be construed to mean ‘spouse,’ and all personal pronouns, as they appear in the relevant sections of the Domestic Relations Law, are and shall be construed to apply equally to either men or women.”

Professor Arthur Leonard of New York Law School, in an extensive legal analysis of the decision, said that the while the city's attorneys agreed with the plaintiffs that gay couples form families and need support, the city argued there was nevertheless a state interest in “maintaining the traditional form of marriage as a union of one man and one woman” and “in avoiding conflict with the laws of other jurisdictions, including the federal government, that would not recognize same-sex marriages performed in New York.” Ling-Cohan rejected those arguments.

Justice Ling-Cohan stayed her own order for 30 days to give the city the chance to appeal; Bloomberg announced that this was his intention the day after she issued it. Assemblymember Dick Gottfried, sponsor of a Right to Marry Bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Albany, said that if the mayor truly supported same-sex marriage now, he could take the side of the plaintiffs in bringing the case to the Court of Appeals.

“The mayor is a coward,” said State Senator Tom Duane, an out gay sponsor of the Right to Marry Bill in the Senate. “He should stand up with us in this most important civil rights battle of our lifetimes.”

Bloomberg said, “I do not want to see happen here what happened in California,” where gay marriages were authorized by Mayor Gavin Newsom last winter and overturned by the state court. But in the New York case, it is a court that is ordering the city to issue the licenses.

Hunter College political science professor Kenneth Sherill saw electoral politics behind the mayor's decision to appeal: “Bloomberg says that [issuing licenses to gay couples] will cause chaos -- tens of thousands of people coming to the city! But the Republican Convention and the Olympics are okay. Somebody's worried about the Republican primary.”

Bloomberg is facing a Republican primary from conservative former Councilmember Tom Ognibene and may indeed be concerned about not taking positions too at variance with the Republican base nor the core Giuliani constituency that elected him in 2001.

There are other pending same-sex marriage lawsuits around New York State, one brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and another led by civil rights lawyer Norman Siegel. These cases did not get positive lower court rulings and are on appeal.

If the issue is to be resolved judicially, it will be the decision of the Court of Appeals which now is made up of three appointees by former governor Mario Cuomo, a Democrat, and four by the Republican incumbent, George Pataki. While it is still one of the more liberal high courts in the country, having struck down the state’s death penalty law last year, it is more difficult to predict how it will rule on same-sex marriage. Only the Massachusetts high court has opened marriage to gay couples, and that led to a movement backed by President Bush for a federal amendment to ban same-sex marriage and passage of thirteen state amendments against it with more on the way.

Assemblymember Deborah Glick, an out lesbian, said, “There is no support for a Defense of Marriage Act in the Assembly.”

One prominent Democrat said that polling by the Assembly leadership found that while a majority of New Yorkers do not support same-sex marriage, a majority also doesn’t like politicians taking anti-gay positions. The source said that this is why though the Senate rarely takes pro-gay actions, they hesitate passing anti-gay bills even on marriage.

While Republican Governor Pataki opposes same-sex marriage, he has taken incremental steps to support lesbian and gay rights, including protecting gay relationships, in recent years.

A conservative who welcomed Ling-Cohan’s decision was William Donahue, director of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights who said that he believed it would inspire a backlash against “activist judges” and will help build support for the amendment to the United States Constitution banning same-sex marriage. That amendment is given little hope, even from Bush, of gaining the necessary two-thirds vote in both houses of Congress. It fell far short last year. But all bets would be off if a court were to strike down the federal Defense of Marriage Act that bans federal recognition of same-sex marriage and allows states to deny such recognition to legal same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

New York is already grappling with the reality of legally married same-sex couples, mostly New York couples who married in Canada. State

Comptroller Alan Hevesi last year said that they would be recognized by the state pension system and Mayor Bloomberg followed suit with the city pension system. But the state Department of Taxation and Finance will not let these couples file as married with New York State, even though Attorney General Eliot Spitzer issued an opinion in 2003 that New York should honor these marriages even if it does not yet perform them.

In neighboring jurisdictions, Massachusetts has allowed gay couples to marry since last March, but has closed the door to out-of-state http://massequality.org/news_bg_4_19.php gay couples marrying there--an issue being litigated. A state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and mandate civil unions passed a joint session of the Massachusetts legislature last year, but it must pass again this year before it can go to the voters in 2006, a less likely prospect now that the state has had a year to get used to gay married couples.

Seven of ten Canadian provinces or territories permit gays to marry and the parliament just got a bill legalizing it for the entire country with a close vote expected in June. New Jersey has a same-sex marriage case that is at the appellate level. And Connecticut is considering same-sex marriage and civil union legislation, with the state gay lobby group on the issue saying they will settle for nothing less than full marriage rights.

Ossie Davis 1917-2005

Ossie Davis was hailed at his deathon February 4 as a consummate artist for his work in theater, movies, and television, but equally honored as one of the major civil rights figures of the 20th century. He worked not just to improve the status of African Americans in the entertainment industry, but for the advancement of all people in the larger society.

Davis, often with his wife Ruby Dee, worked closely with such seminal figures in the civil rights movement as Paul Robeson, WEB DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Fanny Lou Hamer, and Malcolm X. He was the chief eulogist at the funeral of Malcolm X in 1965.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (34 on Time-Warner; 107 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

 

Immigrant City


New York has always been a city of immigrants. Even the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 and the economic downturn that followed did not deter immigrants from moving to the city.

New York saw a net gain of 339,000 immigrants from April 2000 to July 2003. The foreign born population in New York City is now at all time high at 3.2 million out of the city’s population of 8 million, according to a new study by the Department of City Planning.

The report attempts to examine the countries of origin of the foreign-born, their paths of entry, residential distribution, and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. But the reason immigrants are drawn to New York remains the same.

“Immigrants keep coming here,” co-author of the report Joseph Salvo told the Daily Times. “The reason they keep coming here is opportunity.”

Countries of Origin: The Emergence of Mexican Immigrants

In earlier decades, the overwhelming majority of the foreign-born population in New York City was from various part of Europe. But in the 2000 census European immigrants comprised only 19 percent.

The Dominican Republic sent the most immigrants to New York City, numbering 369,220 or 13 percent of the total, followed by China (262,600), Jamaica (178,900), Guyana (130,600) and Mexico (122,600).

Even though Mexico has long been the origin of most immigrants in the United States, in the past Mexican immigrant preferred other cities to New York City as their destination. According to the 1990 census, Mexican ranked 17th with 32,689 of population in the city. City demographers expected the actual growth of Mexican immigrants at 200,000.

Rounding up the top ten are Ecuador, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Colombia and Russia.

Generally, immigrants from non Hispanic Caribbean countries are moving disproportionately to New York. While they account for five percent of the nation’s foreign-born population, they comprised of more than one-fifth of the city’s foreign born.

 
 
Foreign-born Population by Country of Birth, New York City, 1990 and 2000
2000
1990
Growth, 1990-200
Rank
Number
Rank
Number
Number
Percent
Total/Foreign Born
-
2,871,032
-
2,082,931
788,101
37.8
Dominican Republic
1
369,186
1
225,017
144,169
64.1
China
2
261,551
2
160,399
101,152
63.1
Jamaica
3
178,922
3
116,128
62,794
54.1
Guyana
4
130,647
6
76,150
54,497
71.6
Mexico
5
122,550
17
32,689
89,861
274.9
Ecuador
6
114,944
10
60,451
54,493
90.1
Haiti
7
95,580
7
71,892
23,688
32.9
Trinidad & Tobago
8
88,794
12
56,478
32,316
57.2
Colombia
9
84,404
8
65,731
18,673
28.4
Russia
10
81,408
*
*
*
*

* The USSR was ranked 5th in the 1990 with 80,815 residents. It if were a single entity in 2000, it would have ranked 4th with approximately 164,000 persons.

 

Legal Pathway of Entry

Traditionally, immigrants were admitted to the country mainly under family reunification or refugee and asylum clauses. But the 1990 Immigration Act allowed immigrants to enter the country through working visas and diversity visa (visa lottery).

In the 1990s, only 37 percent of immigrants coming to the city entered under the family preference, down from 61 percent in the 1980s. Ten percent of immigrant, mostly Filipino, Korean and Chinese immigrants, used employment visas to stay in the country.

While accounting for only 8 percent of immigrants entering the country, visa lottery program helped increase the numbers of immigrants from Poland, Ireland, Bangladesh, Ghana and Nigeria.

The number of refugees in the city tripled in the 1990s due to the massive influx of refugees from the former Soviet Union countries.

The report did not offer numbers of undocumented immigrants.

Residential Settlement Pattern

Over one million immigrants, around 36 percent of the total, settled in Queens, while 33 percent live in Brooklyn, 16 percent in Manhattan, 13 percent in the Bronx and 3 percent in Staten Island.

Washington Heights has the most immigrants (90,300) followed by Flushing (86,900), Astoria (84,700), Bay Ridge-Benson hurst (78,600) and Elmhurst (74,600). Other neighborhood in the top ten included Graves-Homecrest, Flatland-Canarsie, Jackson Heights, Corona and Sunset Park Industry City.

Some immigrants chose to settle outside of the New York City. In 2000, there were 5.2 million immigrants in the New York Metropolitan Region, which includes the city’s five counties, an inner ring of 12 counties closest to the city and outer ring of 14 counties. While the inner counties accounted for one-third of immigrants, the outer counties accounted for less than one-tenth.

But counties close to the city have a disproportionately higher immigrant population. For example, 39 percent of population in Hudson County, New Jersey are foreign born.

Socioeconomic Attainment of the Foreign-born

Regardless of their income or educational background, immigrant families usually have more than one worker, making their household income close to the city median ($37,770).

 
 
Household Income and Poverty Status by Country of Birth,
New York City, 2000
Household Income
Poverty
Public Assistance*
Median
Ratio: Subgroup to Total
Avg. workers per household
Persons for whom poverty status has been determined
Percent in Poverty
Total Households
Percent with PA income
Total/New York City
$37,700
1.00
1.1
7,853,336
21.1
3,020,980
7.5
Native-born
$39,900
1.06
1.0
4,994,540
21.5
1,816,243
7.8
Foreign
$35,000
0.93
1.2
2,858,796
20.4
1,204,737
7.0
Dominican Republic
$25,300
0.67
1.1
369,002
30.9
142,042
18.6
China
$33,320
0.88
1.5
261,002
21.7
95,086
4.5
Jamaica
$38,500
1.02
1.3
173,195
14.6
80,990
6.0
Guyana
$41,960
1.11
1.5
128,992
13.4
48,054
5.5
Mexico
$32,000
0.85
1.8
123,265
32.0
32,201
12.5
Ecuador
$36,000
0.95
1.5
111,337
21.9
37,276
8.0
Haiti
$36,000
0.95
1.3
96,032
19.1
40,694
5.9
Trinidad & Tobago
$36,300
0.96
1.3
92,737
16.5
40,036
4.9
Colombia
$35,000
0.93
1.3
83,288
20.2
31,705
6.2
Russia
$28,000
0.74
1.0
83,941
22.2
37,624
8.3

* Households with at least one person receiving public assistance income

 

While just one third of Mexican immigrants had high school degree, their household has in come that is 85 percent of the city’s median because multiple family members are in the work force.

Generally, Latin Americans had low level of social economic attainment. Only one in ten Dominicans and Hondurans had completed high schools, and both males and females had low labor force participation. On the other hand, Jamaican, Trinidad, Haitian, Guyanese households, headed mostly by females, have one of the city’s highest female labor force participation.

Some groups, such as Korean immigrants, have advanced education but 70 percent were not proficient in English. As a result, many chose to start their own business. Self-employment is also popular among some European immigrants such as Italians and Greeks, many of whom do not have high school education.

Impact of Immigration of New York City

The report concluded that immigration help to stabilize population growth and comprised for 40 percent of all city resident in labor force. Many industries such as manufacturing, construction and service industries rely heavily on immigrant laborers. Finally, immigrants also help maintain the city’s housing stock, 48 percent of recently occupied housing units are immigrant households.

An immigrant from Bangkok, Thailand, Chaleampon Ritthichai is the editor of The Citizen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death Penalty


Support for the death penalty was credited with electing Ed Koch mayor of New York City in 1977 and George Pataki governor in 1994, each in races with Mario Cuomo, a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. Pataki brought the death penalty back to New York State in 1995 and while there have six convictions under it since then, there have been no executions. Last June, the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals, declared the law unconstitutional.

Pataki continues to support the death penalty, touting it in his State of the State address January 5 among the reasons crime has gone down dramatically during his tenure.

But the political landscape may have changed around him. Opponents of the death penalty, who see it as a major civil rights issue, have reason to feel encouraged that it will not be reinstated in New York.

Yes, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, the almost certain Democratic nominee for governor next year, has said he is in favor of capital punishment for “premeditated acts of terrorism.” But he told Joyce Purnick of the New York Times, “I would be surprised if it’s an issue that is paramount in the public debate.”

Yes, the New York State Senate has passed a new death penalty bill that is supposed to address the concerns of the high court. But opponents call the Senate bill itself, which was passed without hearings, constitutionally flawed. The court struck down the 1995 law in June because it said that if a jury could not agree unanimously on giving a defendant either death or life without parole, the convicted person would get 25 years to life with parole. The court felt that this coerced the jury to be unanimous for a more severe penalty. Under the new Senate bill, if a jury deadlocks on a sentence, the defendant automatically gets life without parole.

Whether or not the senate bill could pass constitutional muster, the Democratic-controlled New York State Assembly seems to be opposed to it, and may not bring it to the floor for a vote. At its first hearing on the issue in December, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau spoke out strongly against it: "The death penalty exacts a terrible price in dollars, lives and human decency. Rather than tamping down the flames of violence, it fuels them."

Additional hearings are planned for January 21st at 10 AM at the Bar Association of the City of New York at 42 W. 44th Street and January 25th in Albany. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a supporter of the death penalty in the past, has given no indication of when or if he will take up the State Senate’s bill to reinstate it.

The death penalty will play a more nuanced role in the mayor’s race this year, with incumbent Republican Mike Bloomberg opposed to it and his Democratic rivals split on the issue. Former Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer, the only Democrat who leads Bloomberg in recent polls, opposed the death penalty until 1997 when he came out in favor of it for cop killers. When he ran again in 2001, he supported a moratorium on the death penalty, a position that many have embraced in the wake of DNA evidence exonerating scores of death row inmates. U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner of Brooklyn is a death penalty supporter who also now supports a moratorium.

The rest of the Democratic field--City Council Speaker Gifford Miller, Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields, and Councilmember Charles Barron--oppose the death penalty. With crime--especially murders--down, it is possible that this issue will play much less of a role in the mayoral election than it has in the past, though Ferrer may be attacked by some of his opponents for his evolution on it.

The New York City Council passed a resolution in 2002 by a 38-13 vote calling on the state to halt all executions "until the application of capital punishment in New York is investigated and issues of fairness, justice, equality, due process and cost are addressed."

All of this encourages death penalty opponents in the state. New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty, founded in 1990, is a coalition that has grown to encompass more than 300 supporting groups , ranging from the New York Bar Association to the New York State Council of Churches. “Too frequently, the death penalty is imposed not on people who commit the worst crimes, but who have the worst attorneys, limited resources, and the wrong skin color," said David Kaczynski, the coalition's executive director (brother of Ted, the "Unabomber"). "You could call it a negative lottery where on the names of the poor are ever entered.”

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said, “There is clear evidence that it does not deter crime and that whether or not someone faces it depends more on race, geography, and politics than the gravity of the events or the misdeeds of the perpetrator.” But she added, “even if our society could insure that capital punishment could be administered with unfailing accuracy, fairness, and justice, we would still be opposed to it because it is immoral for a society to kill people.”

Lieberman noted that has proven cheaper to incarcerate convicted murderers for life than for the government to go through the process of trying to execute them. New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty estimates that, even though nobody has been executed, the state spent more than $175 million on that process since reinstating capital punishment.

Ban On Subway Photography

The on-again, off-again plan by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to ban people from taking photographs, films, or videos on public transit or in subway stations (unless they have a permit) is on again, the New York Times reported. Artists are complaining that they will lose the chance to work in one of their favorite environments. Tourists won’t be able to record their presence in our famous hole in the ground.

Tom Kelly, speaking for the autority, told the Times, “Nobody is looking to violate anybody’s civil rights or deny anybody’s constitutional rights. But when you check with law enforcement agencies, they have uncovered photographs of subway and rail systems from various terrorist organizations. And I don’t believe they were going in somebody’s scrapbook.”

Critics of the ban say that the folks at the MTA are kidding themselves about stopping terrorist surveillance of the transit system, which can be done by tiny hidden cameras.

The ban will go into effect as soon as the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has the chance to vote on it.

Andy Humm is a former member of the City Commission on Human Rights. He is co-host of the weekly "Gay USA" on Manhattan Neighborhood Network (34 on Time-Warner; 107 on RCN) on Thursdays at 11 PM.

 



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