New Yorkers Love Marriage Equality

By Michael A. Jones -

If there was any question that the state of New York is ready for marriage equality, let these new facts settle it. A poll from Quinnipiac University released this week finds not just a little support for same-sex marriage in the Empire State, but a whopping amount of support. As in, the highest level of support on record for same-sex marriage in the state's history.
According to the poll, 56 percent of New Yorkers support the right of same-sex couples to get married, while only 37 percent oppose same-sex marriage. That's a monumental gap, and a robust reminder to New York's state legislature that the time to act on marriage equality is now.
Freedom to Marry, the national organization working to achieve marriage equality throughout the United States, said that these new poll numbers should make it crystal clear to lawmakers in New York that there's no political risk whatsoever to supporting same-sex marriage. On the contrary, lawmakers who don't support marriage equality face alienating New York voters.
"Today’s poll is yet another confirmation that a strong majority of New Yorkers believe that loving and committed same-sex couples should share in the freedom to marry. New Yorkers, like all Americans, are looking at their gay neighbors, co-workers, and family members and realizing that they deserve the same fairness, the same treatment, and the same respect under the law as everyone else," said Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry's Executive Director. "The Assembly has passed a freedom to marry bill three times. Governor Cuomo has urged and promised action to end this exclusion. It is indeed time to act. Both chambers should swiftly send a marriage bill to the governor’s desk so that New York can move forward, as New Yorkers want and deserve."
Meanwhile, the new poll numbers are also a perfect tie-in to the latest video from the Human Rights Campaign's "New Yorkers for Marriage Equality" initiative. So far we've seen Whoopi Goldberg, Julianne Moore, Michael Bloomberg, and a host of other celebrities and politicians lending their voices to this campaign. The newest voice? Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who says in the clip that America can't fully be a pinnacle of democracy until all discrimination is ended.
"This is the last vested institutionalized bigotry that's left in this country, and we need to get rid of it," Kennedy Jr. says in the clip (which you can watch below).
So what's it going to be, New York lawmakers? Another year of the Empire State stopping progress, or a year in which the walls of discrimination further crumble, with New York taking the lead?



-end-