by Alan Chartock

Conservative predictions about gay marriage haven’t come true

What was all the fuss about? Gays and lesbians wanted to marry. You’d have thought the world was going to explode. Nothing made for better news copy. Some evangelicals literally raised hell; we were Sodom and Gomorrah. God would punish us. Leviticus in the Bible was quoted again and again: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination.” We were about to revisit Jonah’s Nineveh. The cry urging repentance was heard throughout the land.

Incredibly, an awful lot of people went along with the bigotry and nonsense and more than a few still do. But, as so often happens, an oppressed group followed Joe Hill’s advice and went on to organize. Since the Stonewall riots in New York’s Greenwich Village, gays have been turning on their oppressors and saying “Enough.”

From then until now, tremendous strides have been made. Our politicians have eschewed the old safe road that condoned bigotry; kicking and screaming, they have been turned around. Sure, some have done so for so-called “political reasons,” but that’s OK. It is classic Americana that getting politicians to have some guts is always helped along by the old labor leader Samuel Gompers’ message that we reward our friends and punish our enemies.

No one likes to recognize it, but even President Barack Obama was late to the marriage equality party. That’s OK; at least he seems to have gotten there. In New York State, Gov. Andrew Cuomo is portrayed as a hero for kicking legislators in both parties until they did the right thing. That may be true, or perhaps he saw a wonderful opportunity to cover his blue dog conservative Democratic tracks by supporting a gay rights campaign.

Frankly I don’t give a damn, since he did the right thing. His father, Mario, found a lot of similar traction in his stance on the death penalty. They both did what was right and were rewarded for it.

I love the fact that what started as one of the biggest political battles in New York is already being taken for granted. There will be no retreat. There will be no return to the bad old days. The same thing happened with abortion, and many of the same political forces and coalitions were behind the rear guard there, too. One can only wonder what in the world the conservatives see in this, as they always push to stay in office and to survive.

I have talked to many of these politicians and they always tell me the same thing: The most important thing is “the sanctity of the family.” I often ask them how gay marriage desanctifies marriage or goes against natural law. They always mumble and repeat themselves. At that point, there is little you can do. When asked why two people who love each other shouldn’t be allowed to marry, they come back with all that mumbling again.

This brings us back to Chartock’s first law of politics. It’s called political saliency. That means that many folks vote based on a single overriding concern. In some cases, the issue is a woman’s right to choose. In others, it’s the political survival of Israel. Here, it’s a gay or lesbian couple’s right to marry, to have families, to be able to visit a loved one in the hospital.

So gays and lesbians and their allies got together and, like the little engine that could, they began to climb that mountain very slowly. But when they reached the top, they picked up speed. They’re not there yet. Not in places like North Carolina, where people get behind that voting curtain and let all their bigotry hang out. But in New York, in Massachusetts and in so many other states, it turns out, it’s no big deal.

So what was all that fuss about, anyway?

Alan S. Chartock is president and CEO of WAMC/Northeast Public Radio and an executive publisher at The Legislative Gazette.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Council Speaker Christie Quinn announced on Tuesday that a study by the City Clerk’s office  and NYC & Company, the city’s tourism agency, estimated that same sex-marriages have contributed $259 million to the city’s economy since New York passed the Marriage Equality Act one year ago on July 24.

“Marriage equality has made our City more open, inclusive and free – and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” Bloomberg said in the statement. “New York has always been a great place to get married and since the passage of the Marriage Equality Act, we’re welcoming more and more couples, their families and friends from around the country and the world.”

According to the survey, over 201,000 same-sex wedding guests visited from outside the city. They booked over 235,000 hotel rooms at an average rate of $275 a day, as well as paid for dining, celebrations, gifts and various other wedding-related purchases. Add this income to at least 8,200 gay-marriage licenses that were purchased in the last year (couples are not required to disclose their sexes) and $16 million in tax revenue from the marriages, and you start to get a sense of the same-sex wedding business’s size.

“Thirteen months ago our legislators did the right thing and voted to make same-sex marriage a reality, ensuring that New York State was among the leaders in equality,” said City Comptroller John Liu in a statement. “Today’s announcement is simply the icing on the wedding cake.”

In addition to New York, same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and the District of Columbia. Massachusetts led the charge in 2004, and found similar economic growth: gay marriage added an estimated $111 million to the state’s economy in five years.

No Impact of Foraging
Excellent article (“Central Park Forager,” May 17).
To answer the Parks Department’s claims one more time: if foraging is so destructive and dangerous, why did the Parks Department pay me to teach foraging for four years in the late 1980s? Why did they set up foraging tours, where I taught Conservancy volunteers, and others, where I taught Park Rangers? Why did the Parks Commissioner, Henry Stern, attend my first tour every year?
Is there a single weed we’ve been collecting week after week in the same spot for over 30 years that has declined due to foraging? If so, which species and where? Which of the tens of thousands of adults and kids I‚Äôve been teaching for over three decades has been harmed by foraging?
In reality, foraging has no impact on the environment whatsoever. It puts adults and children in touch with nature, helps them learn the science behind the plants they’re collecting and the ecosystems where they’re growing, and through enjoying our renewable resources, inspires people to protect and preserve our nonrenewable resources. This is especially important for children‚ many of the kids I’ve taught and inspired have grown up to become conservationists or scientists, while others have become school teachers who bring their classes on foraging tours with me.
-Steve Brill

For all his chatter of hope and change, and for all the good he’s done for gay and lesbian people by allowing them to serve openly in the military, Obama was still a major disappointment on marriage. He talked about how he was “evolving” on the issue, prompting some activists to put a pithy phrase on a button: “Evolve, already.” How long, we asked ourselves, does it take for a constitutional law professor to get around to thinking this through?

That changed last week, when Obama officially endorsed gay marriage, almost as eloquently as his candid vice-president did a few days before. The announcement sent shockwaves through our media-centric and gay-friendly city, where I think it’s fair to say the president is even more welcome than he was before.

Yes, there are opponents here to gay marriage, like the media-savvy Timothy Dolan. Last year, after he compared marrying someone of the same sex to wedding (and, by association, bedding) an animal, I took the liberty of calling his office and providing a woman who answered the phone with my reaction to his ridiculous comments. “I want to get married,” I said, “and I want him to get out of the way.”

Outside of religious extremists, New Yorkers seem pretty positive on this big issue. We have a mayor and a governor who led the way on same-sex marriage. Indeed, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s statement about Obama’s change of view contained a rare historical view. The mayor saw Obama’s comments to ABC’s Robin Roberts as a turning point—one that mattered because it came from the top.

“No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people—and I have no doubt that this will be no exception,” Bloomberg said.

Is history at odds with the short term? Maybe. A Manhattan-based reporter pal of mine, reporting on the news as it broke, suggested Obama was alienating middle-class straight men in the Midwest. Maybe, but if Obama is doomed, it’s not because I got married or because he now officially OKs the union. It’s because he never really learned how to manage the American economy, especially with Republicans in Congress at war with him. Now that you’re cool with my marriage, Mr. President, would you please fire Timothy Geithner?

As a former Howard Dean supporter, I’m not great at picking a winner. Still, I’d argue the president has helped himself in a couple of ways. He helped build his brand, as the Madison Avenue peeps might say. He’s going for gutsy. This is the brave Obama, the guy who failed to show up during negotiations with congressional Republicans.

Like all of the preceding elections, this one will be about turnout. Obama needs the money and energy of millions of gay voters, along with their families and friends. He was coming to town anyway to take our money. Now he can come without the ridiculous pretense that he’s still evolving. Instead, he will be a dude who, win or lose, has a place in history. He was the first U.S. president to tell some of us that he thinks we have the right to get married. In the city of Stonewall, that’s going to resonate.

On our wedding day, the couples at City Hall were of all shapes and sizes and, yes, they were both gay and straight. There was a stunning New York mix. To me, the whole thing was a walking and breathing miracle—how I was allowed to join legally with the love of my life in the city of my heart. I think Obama would have enjoyed himself on that December morning.

I like that there’s now no disconnect between my marriage and my president.

Christopher Moore is a writer living in Manhattan. He can be reached by email (ccmnj@aol.com) and is on Twitter (cmoorenyc).

As you can imagine, it was not positive.

“I am very disappointed that the president has decided to support gay marriage,” Dias Sr. said. “But we are America. And in America you have the freedom to chose whatever you want.”

The Rev went on to say that he supports North Carolina’s vote yesterday to support a constitutional ban against gay marriage, noting that every time the question of gay marriage came before the electorate, the vote is always to reject it.

“In every state that people voted for gay marriage, people rejected gay marriage,” he said. “The only way to get gay marriage is through the Legislature, with lots of money.”

Not even Bill Clinton, who traveled to North Carolina before the vote to urge its defeat, could sway the people, Diaz Sr. said.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who successfully pushed for the legalization of gay marriage last year, told reporters today that he had not talked about gay marriage with the president during his Albany visit yesterday. And Diaz Sr. said that Obama’s change-of-hear most likely had to do with Vice President Joe Biden’s comments earlier this week than any conversation he may or may not have had with Cuomo.

“They had this planned already,” he said. “Cuomo had nothing to do with it.”

The senator, who frequently and loudly vocalizes his opposition to gay marriage and abortion, recently equating the later to the Holocaust (as well as a ban on Happy Meal toys), said that Obama’s final “evolution” on gay marriage will hurt him electorally.

“That will help Mitt Romney, that will definitely help Mitt Romney,” Diaz Sr. said.

[UPDATE] About 20 minutes after I got off the phone with him, the senator sent out a “What You Should Know” statement. Here it is:

To read the full article at City & State click here.

“Without a doubt, absolutely, unequivocally, unmistakably there is no other religious denomination in the history of this country that has experienced such a long-term history of persecution,” said Belnap, the

The LDS temple near Lincoln Square, a sanctuary for the estimated 5,000 Mormons living in Manhattan today. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

former president of the Manhattan stake (the Mormon equivalent of a diocese). “The bigotry directed toward my religious faith is unparalleled in the history of America. There has not been the level and the extent of vitriol and exclusion. I think this exists, absolutely. It just has a different form now.”

While there is an undeniable history of persecution directed at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), as the Mormon Church is formally known, there are plenty who would disagree about where the persecution is directed these days. Last month, the passage of Proposition 8 in California banned gay marriage and ignited a firestorm of protest and anger. Much of the backlash was directed toward LDS members, who, according to varying news accounts, raised more than half the money spent in support of Prop. 8. Locally, plenty of bruised feelings on both sides of the issue still remain even now, more than a month after thousands gathered to protest in front of the Mormon temple on Lincoln Square.

It’s impossible to know how much of the estimated at $20 to 25 million raised by Mormons in support of Prop. 8 came from New York. But the church’s highest governing authority, the LDS First Presidency, issued a letter in June calling on all members to “[donate] your means and time.”

In response to these efforts, a demonstration began in front of the Mormon temple at West 65th Street and Columbus Avenue on the evening of Nov. 12. The crowd, carrying signs and chanting, swelled into the thousands; estimates of the protest range from 4,000 to 15,000 participants. (Three days later, a separate protest was held at City Hall in conjunction with similar events around the nation.)

“It was the largest-scale gay-protest action that I’ve seen in New York since the death of Matthew Shepard in 1998,” said Corey Johnson, a real estate developer active in local politics who originally planned the Nov. 12 event.

According to Johnson, the purpose of the protest “was to show the national leadership, the hierarchy of the Mormon Church, that their involvement in affecting public policy was unacceptable. The Mormons took a very large and public role, whether as part of phone banks or in funding millions of dollars.”

He hopes for legislative action in New York and elsewhere that will enact civil rights for gays and permit same-sex marriage. To that end, the next event on his agenda is a charity vigil—which has nothing to do with the Mormons—scheduled for Dec. 20 in Times Square.

Other participants perceived the protest as having a broader target.

“I definitely feel like it was focused on a general injustice,” said Matt Greenawalt, a public school teacher from the Upper East Side who was at the protest. “The Mormons were a group that was identifiable as one that had been influential in this process. Of the signs, maybe one in 10 mentioned Mormonism. I don’t think it was directed at Mormons as it was at the sense that they had had an unfair influence.”
It was notable that the demonstration eventually became a march that moved down Broadway and away from the temple before culminating at Columbus Circle.

Participants at the Nov. 12 Prop. 8 protest, which attracted anywhere from 4,000 to 15,000 people. Photo By: Andrew Schwartz

Still, to many local Mormons, a burgeoning demographic, last month’s protest was an uncomfortable and upsetting experience. And though he did not draw a direct comparison, the sight of thousands gathered outside the temple may have provided a reminder for LDS members like Belnap of the mobs that occasionally hounded Mormons in the 19th century, including the one that murdered Joseph Smith, the movement’s founder.

“Proposition 8 was supported by the Orthodox Jewish community, the Catholic community, the general conservative community and the black community,” Belnap said, “but I haven’t seen a single protest in Harlem or Williamsburg or at St. Patrick’s Cathedral that has attracted the numbers or hatred of a certain group of people for what they believe. It appears that they haven’t been targeted in the same organized, concerted, bigoted, hateful, vitriolic way.”

Belnap emphasized that he was speaking only for himself and not in any ecclesiastical role, but rather in “a spirit of candor, to let people who might be interested know what a sense of dismay and hurt some members of the church feel.”

David Buckner, who took over as stake president for Belnap last year, also felt the Mormon Church was also unfairly singled out.

“It wasn’t a surprise, and it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing,” he said of the protest. “But it was disappointing that there was such a narrow target, that the church became a lightning rod because there had to be some outlet of frustration. It would be helpful if people understood our faith better. Considering how it is one of the fastest-growing religions in the world, it surprises me that it is this misunderstood.”

As if to prove the point, Buckner rattled off the names of many prominent Mormons (such as hotelier Bill Marriott, television host Glenn Beck and U.S. Senators Harry Reid, Bob Bennett and Orrin Hatch), but he then acknowledged that Mitt Romney’s recent presidential campaign encountered plenty of suspicion and mistrust for religious reasons.

“It’s sometimes bewildering,” he said. “Maybe it’s just a matter of time and integration.”

Such integration is certainly increasing throughout the city. When Belnap first arrived in New York in 1986, there were about 500 Mormons in Manhattan. Now there are nearly 5,000, with even larger communities in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The four Manhattan wards (or congregations) of 1986 have multiplied into 14 today. There are six conventional wards, four dedicated to singles between 18 and 30 and another four that are language-specific to either Spanish, Mandarin or American Sign Language.

For LDS members of a certain generation, the growth is a bit mind-boggling. According to Belnap, Mormons were in New York City since the church was founded 188 years ago. Joseph Smith passed through in 1832, and a permanent presence began five years later, one that has been mostly continuous through the present era. But as the church left the Finger Lakes region Upstate where it was founded and moved progressively westward, few Mormons put down roots in New York. Most New York City LDS members were immigrants from Great Britain or Scandinavia who were passing through the city on their way to the Mountain West. The first New York City stake was formed in 1934 at a converted synagogue on West 81st Street, but even then the numbers were still small.

“Up until the 1980s, New York was a place that a lot of Latter-day Saints came to only for educational and professional reasons,” Belnap said. “You just didn’t see a lot of people, a lot of families putting down roots here. Urban life was foreign to most Mormons. For a good portion of my young life, it was perceived as scary, as something to flee from.”

As the city became more livable, Mormons, like everyone, began staying. Both Belnap and Buckner are transplants and Utah natives originally. Belnap came to New York only to attend law school and said he never intended to stay. Now he lives on the Upper East Side with his wife and six children. Buckner resides on the Upper West Side with his family, runs his own consulting and business-training company and is a professor at Teachers College.

For Belnap, perhaps the biggest factor encouraging Mormons to stay in the city was the creation of the first singles ward in 1991. He can remember only five LDS marriages taking place in his first five years in New York. But during his four-year tenure as the leader of that singles ward in the 1990s, he says there were at least 75.
Missionaries also found many converts, especially among new immigrants in the outer boroughs. Along with the Lincoln Square site, there are now chapels in Harlem, Inwood, the Upper East Side, Union Square and on Canal Street. In 2004, the church said there were 42,000 members in the tri-state area.

That was the same year that the temple, the 119th in church history, was dedicated. It was originally planned for Harrison, in Westchester, but was stymied by local opposition (the main stumbling blocks were concerns about property values, traffic congestion and the proposed size of the building). There was also plenty of resistance to the Manhattan temple, according to Belnap, who cited antagonism from Evangelicals and zoning problems with putting up a spire. For him, such attitudes are just additions to a historical continuum of discrimination.

“There’s been a lot of shock in a personal, quiet way because we’re a quiet people,” Belnap said of his community’s reaction to the latest protest. “With a history of persecution, we keep our heads down and don’t wear our religion on our sleeves. For us, it’s not a matter of hatred toward any group. It’s a matter of preserving what we think is ultimately God’s plan for the human people, which is family.”

He added that there have been unintended, positive consequences for Mormons, saying that he has seen an increased number of lapsed members returning to services in the past month. Belnap also noted that other religious groups have spoken out in defense of the church. On Dec. 5, for example, a full-page ad in the New York Times declared, “The violence and intimidation being directed against the LDS … church, and other religious organizations—and even against individual believers—simply because they supported Proposition 8 is an outrage that must stop.”

The ad was sponsored by The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a nonprofit law firm based in Washington, D.C., and was signed by a selection of public figures, including some Catholic, Evangelical and Jewish leaders. Truth Wins Out, a New York City nonprofit, responded a week later with an ad in the Salt Lake Tribune titled “Lies in the Name of the Lord.” It described some of the Times ad signers as “culture warriors” who only share with Mormons “an uncommon zeal for promoting anti-gay discrimination.”

The war of words will doubtlessly continue.

Despite any lingering resentments, Buckner remains focused on bringing his church closer to the community.

“The Mormon Church has been one of the most persecuted faiths in American history, so it’s sad that it sometimes continues,” Buckner said. “On the other hand, that protest is the nature of democracy.”

He also mentioned the Manhattan stake’s support of the Harlem Hellfighters, a youth football organization, and the group plans to donate four truckloads of supplies to the Food Bank for New York City.

According to Monica Blum, president of the Lincoln Square Business Improvement District, the temple sponsors one of the malls, or gardens, on the Broadway median and also contributes the use of its gym as a performance space every winter.

“They’re just as supportive if not more so than the other local property owners,” she said.
“There is a lot of outreach that takes place,” Buckner said. “I think it’s important that we stretch out. You have to participate in the community, so we have bridge-building groups that go to police precinct committees and community boards. We’re doing all we can to go in as neighbors, learn what we can do in the community and find ways to reach out. I don’t think we’re fully there yet, but we’re here, we’re available and we want to help.”

“I have never entertained the notion that passing the Marriage Equality Act may need to wait for any reason,” O’Donnell said in a statement. “I am not in a position to count votes in the State Senate but I have consistently asserted my optimism that justice and equality will prevail.”

Last year, O’Donnell carried then-Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s marriage equality bill in the Assembly. In a historic vote, the chamber passed the bill.

The three rogue Democrats, dubbed the “Gang of Three,” have withheld supporting State Sen. Malcolm Smith for majority leader unless he promised to keep the gay marriage bill from being brought to the Senate floor, among other concessions.