NY Bar Groups Support Gay Marriage

From New York Law Journal -

City Bar President Samuel W. Seymour addresses a news conference yesterday where 18 New York bar groups came out to support a bill that would recognize same-sex marriages in the state (NYLJ, May 17).
In their remarks at the city bar's 44th Street headquarters, Mr. Seymour, of Sullivan & Cromwell, and other bar leaders focused on the legal disadvantages faced by unmarried same-sex couples and called civil unions "not an acceptable substitute for marriages."
"Civil unions impose second-class status on a whole category of people, and the people of New York deserve better than that," he said, adding that the bar groups would not support a law allowing only civil unions. The bar groups, Mr. Seymour said, believe that politically the "time is right" for same-sex marriage legislation to pass in Albany.
Among those attending the news conference, from left, are Yang Chen, executive director of the Asian American Bar Association of New York; Mark H. Alcott, a former president of the New York State Bar Association and of counsel to Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison; Mr. Seymour; Vincent E. Doyle III, the state bar's incoming president and a partner at Connors & Vilardo; Stephen P. Younger, the state bar's president and a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler; and Adeel A. Mangi, director of the Muslim Bar Association of New York and a partner at Patterson Belknap.