Same-sex marriage: N.Y. hands movement major win

New York becomes the sixth state where gay couples can wed and the biggest by far.

Gay rights advocates are hoping the vote will galvanize the movement around the country and help it regain momentum after an almost identical bill was defeated in New York in 2009 and similar measures failed in 2010 in New Jersey and this year in Maryland and Rhode Island.

Though New York is a relative latecomer in allowing same-sex marriage, it is considered an important prize for advocates, given the state’s size and New York City’s international stature and its role as the birthplace of the gay rights movement, which is considered to have started with the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village in 1969.

The New York bill cleared the Republican-controlled state Senate on a 33-29 vote. The Democrat-led Assembly, which passed a different version last week, on Friday adopted the amendments added by the Senate that created stronger religious exemptions.

Passage of the measure was made possible by two Republican senators who had been undecided.

Sen. Stephen Saland voted against a similar bill in 2009.

“While I understand that my vote will disappoint many, I also know my vote is a vote of conscience,” Saland said in a statement before the vote. “I am doing the right thing in voting to support marriage equality.”

Gay couples in gallery wept during his speech.

Sen. Mark Grisanti, a GOP freshman from Buffalo, also said he would vote for the bill. Grisanti said he could not deny anyone what he called basic rights.

The effects of the law could be felt well beyond New York: Unlike Massachusetts, which pioneered same-sex marriage in 2004, New York has no residency requirement for obtaining a marriage license, meaning the state could become a magnet for gay couples across the country who want to have a wedding in Central Park, the Hamptons, the romantic Hudson Valley or that honeymoon hot spot of yore, Niagara Falls.

New York, the nation’s third-most-populous-state, will join Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont and Washington, D.C., in allowing gay couples to wed.

For five months in 2008, same-sex marriage was legal in California, the biggest state in population, and 18,000 gay couples rushed to tie the knot there before voters overturned the state Supreme Court ruling that allowed the practice. The constitutionality of California’s ban is now before a federal appeals court.

The sticking point over the past few days: Republican sought, and obtained, legal protections for religious groups that fear they will be hit with discrimination lawsuits if they refuse to allow their sites to be used for gay weddings.