If you want some advice about marriage — same-sex or otherwise — I can’t think of anyone better to ask than convicted girlfriend-batterer, ex-cop, and current New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate. Monserrate was one of eight Democrats in the state’s “upper” chamber who voted against allowing people of the same gender to marry yesterday.
(Irony alert! Four of the eight ‘no’ votes came from members who represent Queens — but apparently not queens.)
Although I’m sure he had very good reasons for his decision (the word in Albany and his Elmhurst …

 
Everyone’s got something to say about the California Supreme Court’s ruling that the voters of that state had the legal right to approve a measure actively limiting the rights of certain California citizens. A lot of the response is predictable and, depending where you stand on the issue of same-sex marriage, entirely defensible.
So we’ll leave it to the legal scholars to parse the technical merit of the not terribly surprising 185 page decision and we’ll leave it to the activists on both sides to make their arguments about the morality …

 
So Florida Governor Charlie Crist is going to run for Senate. That should be good news for the GOP since the seat he’s running for is being vacated by another Republican (the hapless Mel Martinez) and Crist is very popular in the Sunshine State. The announcement, expected Tuesday, has gotten plenty of coverage but almost all of it avoided the (pink) elephant in the room: Crist is gay gay gay.
The rumors and reports have been well documented for years but a new documentary out this month called “Outrage” outs closeted public …

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 …

Ten years ago when I was doing a story on same-sex marriage, an advocate for gay rights said legal gay marriage would take time but would eventually become commonplace in America. It’s beginning to look like he was right and if prior highly-charged civil rights struggles are any indication it’s happening very quickly by historical standards.
Amidst the arguments for and against the central battle comes down to whether America is a country where the majority rules. The Founding Fathers certainly did everything they could to prevent that from happening with …

It will happen in the next 90 days. A decision that may reignite a culture war that could consume the Obama Administration’s best-laid plans on health care and the economy. Or not.
Thursday California’s Supreme Court heard arguments for and against the proposal that it overturn Proposition 8 — the initiative voters approved in November that overturned the Court’s prior ruling making same-sex marriage legal. Prop 8 passed with the help of a massive infusion of people and cash from the Mormon Church along with Christian and conservative groups after more …