Gay Marriage in Springfield (Twentieth Century Fox)

It’s really hard to see the political logic in Governor David Paterson’s unveiling of a same-sex marriage bill for New York on Thursday. But maybe that’s the beauty of it. Honestly, Paterson has no where to go but up.

Paterson’s poll numbers are in the toilet. His handling of the Kennedy-Gillibrand-Clinton thing was a fiasco. He had his lunch handed to him on the budget. He can’t get a handful of gangster Senators from his own party to grow up and back a plan to rescue the MTA (and their own constituents). Oh, and now he thinks is the time for a gay marriage bill.

The barriers to New York legalizing same-sex marriage have been dropping for a couple of years. First Eliot Spitzer campaigned on passing a bill. Then Republicans in the Senate who had blocked any vote on a marriage bill passed in the Assembly lost control of the upper chamber. But a funny thing happened on the way to Democratic control of the levers of power in Albany: Ruben Diaz Sr.

Senator Diaz has had a suspiciously singular obsession with gays and gay marriage for much of his political career (which began in 2001 with his election to the New York City Council). Diaz was one of the “gang of four” who held up how the Senate would be led after November’s election in order to each obtain their own personal objectives. For Diaz that was a promise not to allow a vote on same-sex marriage.

Since Democrats have only the barest of majorities in the Senate (32-30) every vote they lose from one of their own has to be replaced with a Republican vote. So far four Democratic Senators have said they will vote ‘no’ on gay marriage. What are the odds of finding four Republican Senators to vote for gay marriage? That’s almost a rhetorical question.

It doesn’t help that the new Archbishop Timothy Dolan made opposition to gay marriage one of his signature issues when introduced to New York Catholics (and the rest of us) on Wednesday. That will make it even tougher for Catholic Senators.

Of course there’s a legitimate (and unanswered) question as to what religion should have to do with this. Same-sex marriage laws in Vermont, Iowa, Connecticut, and Massachusetts deal with civil marriages. None of those state’s laws require churches for perform same-sex marriages (nor could they according to that musty old document known as the US Constitution). Indeed the Paterson bill specifically notes churches do not have to perform same-sex marriages unless they choose to. Churches and pastors and archbishops act as though what they believe ought to be codified in civil law that applies to people of other faiths.

Isn’t that what we all think is wrong with the way the Taliban runs the areas it controls in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Last time we checked America was not a theocracy. For centuries some church people complained that marriage between two people of different races was “against God’s will” and until anti-miscegenation laws were ruled unconstitutional in 1967 a majority of states would not allow two people of different races to marry. The very next year in a national Gallup poll 72% of Americans said, despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, they didn’t think two people of different races should be allowed to marry. When Gallup asked the same question in 2007 and one in seven Americans still say people of different races should not marry.

Paterson alluded to this history in his announcement and he did manage to bring together a pretty impressive bunch for his news conference including Mayor Bloomberg and a host of Federal and state electeds. The issue has also gained the support of both Senators Schumer and Gillibrand. (In fact Gillibrand, not to be outdone in the “fastest political rebranding on record” department issued this statement: “New York and the nation are ready to start a new chapter. The time has come for full marriage equality.  I commend the Governor for his leadership on this important issue. If Iowa can do it, so can we.”)

Privately many advocates in the same-sex marriage trenches are worried, however, that the momentum from their recent hard-won victories in Vermont and Iowa will be threatened if New York’s legislature fails to pass a marriage bill. They have been careful to pick their battles and were stung by their defeat in nominally gay-friendly California on the Proposition 8 battle in November. A loss in nominally-gay friendly New York would be an undeniable setback.

So what is Paterson thinking? Perhaps he really believes it can pass. Or perhaps he understands that by pushing this hot button issue to the top of the Albany agenda he can accomplish three things: Redirect the public’s attention to his leadership; Force opponents to say the ugly and stupid things they will inevitably say; and thereby get a Civil Unions bill passed instead of full gay marriage. The end game in that might be to hope that a court challenge similar to the one in New Jersey (the state’s court ruled civil unions weren’t enough) would eventually result in legal same-sex marriage in New York.

In the meantime, maybe fewer people will be talking about Andrew Cuomo….