Articles and Letters (page 2 - 2004)

December 31, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
Time line of related events in 2004 [read more]

December 21, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- The Social Security Administration reversed course Monday and said it will accept marriage certificates issued for heterosexual couples married in New Paltz. In a letter to The Associated Press, the federal agency announced it had reversed its policy of refusing to recognize marriage certificates issued by the town since Feb. 27 -- the date village Mayor Jason West conducted two dozen same-sex marriages. [read more]

December 18, 2004 - Times Herald Record
Advice for the newly married of New Paltz: Bring your driver's license to the Social Security office if you want to change your name. [read more]

December 16, 2004 - The Daily Freeman
NEW PALTZ - Heterosexual newlyweds have been caught in the fallout over the same-sex weddings that took place here earlier this year: The federal government is not recognizing any marriage certificates issued in New Paltz as a valid form of identification for those seeking a name change from the Social Security Administration. [read more]

December 11, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- She only wanted a Social Security card, one with her husband's last name. So newlywed Susie Kilpatrick Wilkening went to the Social Security office in Kingston Dec. 3, carrying what she thought was adequate proof of her identity. [read more]

December 10, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
A state judge has issued a permanent order banning Village of New Paltz officials from performing same-sex marriages. Supreme Court Judge Michael Kavanagh had issued a temporary order last July prohibiting village officials from performing the marriage ceremonies. In a ruling dated Nov. 30, Kavanagh made that order permanent. [read more]

December 09, 2004 - Reuters
OTTAWA (Reuters) - The Supreme Court of Canada gave the federal government the go-ahead on Thursday to legalize gay marriage, but stopped short of saying that this was required by the constitution. The Liberal government had hoped the court would require it to allow gay marriage across Canada, making it politically easier to push draft legislation through Parliament, but the high court refused to give an opinion on this issue. [read more]

November 15, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
Why is America at its current moral crossroads over gay rights? Every time I ponder how to answer, I hear the powerful words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who in a letter from his jail cell thundered in reply to Alabama clergymen who accused him of stirring up trouble, of leading ''unwise and untimely'' protests against racial segregation. [read more]

November 7, 2004 - The Guardian (UK)
In the bars and cafes of Dupont Circle, the centre of Washington DC's gay scene, the mood is funereal. The American gay community, already reeling from a 'broad and widespread assault' under a Bush presidency, now feels under siege from the country itself. [read more]

October 22, 2004 - New York Journal News
Orangetown Town Clerk Charlotte Madigan acted correctly when she declined to issue marriage licenses to 10 same-sex couples, a state Supreme Court justice has ruled. The couples, who became known as "The Nyack 10," went to Orangetown Town Hall in March to get the licenses. Madigan turned them down after being told by state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the state Health Department that she was not legally authorized to issue licenses to same-sex couples. [read more]

October 14, 2004 - New York Times
ALBANY, Oct. 13 - New York State is moving to officially recognize same-sex marriages from Canada for the first time, at least in one limited area: State Comptroller Alan G. Hevesi has ruled that the state's pension system will treat gay couples with Canadian wedding licenses the same way it treats other married couples. [read more]

October 1, 2004 - BBC News
The Spanish government has approved a draft law which will legalise homosexual marriages. The bill gives same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, including the right to adopt children. [read more]

September 17, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
ALBANY -- A state judge has refused to invalidate gay marriages performed in New Paltz, while still preventing village officials from performing more same-sex unions without marriage licenses. State Supreme Court Justice Michael Kavanagh ruled the couples would have to be named parties to the case with the right to be heard in court, and the lawsuit has failed to do that. [read more]

September 6, 2004 - Danbury News-Times
WILTON (CT) — In their sunny kitchen, Jeffrey Busch and Stephen Davis sit playing games with their 2-year-old son Elijah, who is surrounded by cards with animal pictures on them. [read more]

September 5, 2004 - The Vatican
"The institution of marriage necessarily entails the complementarity of husbands and wives who participate in God's creative activity through the raising of children," said the pontiff, according to the text of the speech released by the Vatican. [read more]

August 27, 2004 - The Blade
Speaker after speaker voiced the most bitter anti-gay rhetoric. And the platform committees approved each one. The result is a platform that, if the word “black” or “Jew” were substituted for “gay” or “same sex,” would read like something out of the Nuremberg or Jim Crow Laws. [read more]

August 27, 2004 - NY Journal News
The Nyack 10's lawsuit is one of two in New York and several nationwide filed by same-sex couples seeking the right to marry, said Susan Sommer, supervising attorney for Lambda Legal, a national organization that works to protect lesbians and gays. Other lawsuits are in Oregon, New Jersey and Washington, she said.[read more]

August 26, 2004 - Hartford Courant
Three months after Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to permit gay marriage, seven same-sex couples filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking the right to marry in Connecticut. [read more]

August 13, 2004 - San Francisco Chronicle
As promised in an earlier ruling, the court noted another aspect of the gay-rights debate: It may be stopping the issuance of wedding licenses for now, but the court was not ruling on the larger question of whether gays and lesbians were entitled to marry. That question, which lies at the heart of the fight, remains to be decided. [read more]

August 12, 2004 - Reuters Wire Service
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - California's Supreme Court annulled more than 4,000 gay marriages in San Francisco on Thursday after finding the city acted improperly in granting marriage licenses earlier this year in defiance of state law. [read more]

August 11, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- Mayor Jason West spent the better part of last spring sorting through that most unsexy of tasks: the village budget. But then there were also the interviews with the Dutch and South African reporters, not to mention the appearance on ''Late Night With Conan O'Brien.'' [read more]

August 4, 2004 - The Guardian
America's religious right claimed a victory yesterday in the campaign to cast November's elections as a struggle over public morality after a battleground state voted for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.[read more]

July 27, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
But in Boston, and other communities around Massachusetts, gay and lesbian couples getting married has become a part of everyday life. Against that backdrop, Democrats have come to Boston this week to nominate John Kerry as their candidate to take on President Bush in November. Kerry has not embraced the position of his home state. [read more]

July 23, 2004 - NY Journal News
"This bill seeks to ensure that the bipartisan Defense of Marriage Act signed by President Clinton is not undermined by judicial activism," Kelly said in a statement, referring to the 1996 law that allows states to refuse to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. [read more]

July 17, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
At a corporate meeting of the Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie, members unanimously passed this resolution supporting same-sex civil marriage: [read more]

July 14, 2004 - Times Herald Record
ALBANY, N.Y. - A judge has dismissed charges against two Unitarian Universalist ministers for marrying gay couples without a license. In a ruling released Tuesday, New Paltz Town Justice Judith Reichler threw out charges against the Revs. Kay Greenleaf and Dawn Sangrey, the women's attorney Robert Gottlieb said. [read more]

July 14, 2004 - NY Journal News
In the House of Representatives, Kelly supported the Defense of Marriage Act and said yesterday that she would "consider proposals to ensure the law's intended purpose is met." Pressed about whether that means Kelly would support the proposed constitutional amendment, spokesman Kevin Callahan said only, "She believes (marriage) should be between a man and a woman." [read more]

July 13, 2004 - NY Journal News
The Senate began debate Friday on a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife, effectively banning gay marriage. The president, who could have used his Saturday radio address to comment on any number of topics, including the prior day's report damning prewar intelligence-gathering in Iraq, instead urged the House and Senate to send the amendment to the states for ratification. "To defend marriage," Bush said, "our nation has no other choice." [read more]

July 7, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
When the Senate debates a constitutional amendment next week limiting marriage to a man and a woman, the outcome might not change the law of the land. But it is likely to have a political effect in the next five months, as the presidential election looms and campaigns around the country deal with the ongoing fight over gay marriage and civil unions. [read more]

June 25, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- State Supreme Court Judge Michael Kavanagh has temporarily banned village trustees and their representatives from performing any same-sex marriage. [read more]

June 19, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- With a legal injunction looming, a New Paltz village official and three ministers Saturday conducted 19 same-sex marriages, bringing the total to 171 since the movement began in February. [read more]

June 14, 2004 - NY Journal News
NYACK — Advocates, activists, friends and family members of Rockland's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered residents gathered yesterday in the village to celebrate the culmination of Rockland Gay Pride 2004 and to urge persistence in the fight for equality without exception. [read more]

June 13, 2004 - NY Journal News
MOHEGAN LAKE ­ After sitting out most of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, to her everlasting regret, Unitarian minister Dawn Sangrey decided to fill that gap in her life by plunging into the battle over gay marriag. [read more]

June 11, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- A town judge has dismissed criminal charges against village Mayor Jason West that accused him of marrying same-sex couples without a license. In a ruling issued Thursday, Town Justice Jonathan Katz said provisions in state law that led the town clerk to deny gay and lesbian couples marriage licenses were unconstitutional. [read more]

June 8, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
KINGSTON -- New Paltz Mayor Jason West is permanently banned from performing same-sex marriages as long as such unions are unlicensed by the state, a supreme court judge ruled Monday. [read more]

June 2, 2004 - NY Journal News
Despite recent advances, gays, their loved ones and people committed to equality without exception must work harder than ever to truly achieve their goals, advocates say. [read more]

May 26, 2004 - NY Journal News
The state Legislature should decide whether same-sex couples could be issued marriage licenses, Attorney General Eliot Spitzer stated in response to a lawsuit brought by 10 Rockland couples. [read more]

May 21, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- Rebecca Rotzler, the village's deputy mayor, is now empowered to conduct wedding ceremonies. And while Trustee Bob Hebel is convinced the deputy mayor intends to follow Mayor Jason West's lead and officiate at same-sex weddings, Rotzler said her ''only commitment'' is to wed a heterosexual couple. [read more]

May 21, 2004 - NY Journal News
"We're not in favor of civil unions, we're in favor of getting equal rights," said Norman Siegel, a former American Civil Liberties Union official. "To settle now would be less than the full equal rights. If straight folks can be married, gay people should have the same right. It's as simple as that." [read more]

May 19, 2004 - NY Journal News Editorial
Both President Bush and John Kerry applauded the perseverence, the resiliency, the courage of those who, as the president put it, "saw a great wrong, and won their case." Discussion about the events in Massachusetts, where gays and lesbians were making civil rights history by participating in the nation's first state-sanctioned gay marriages? Not on a day ruled by Electoral Politics 101. [read more]

May 18, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
KINGSTON -- A state Supreme Court judge sparred with lawyers on both sides of the same-sex marriage issue Monday at a hearing on New Paltz Mayor Jason West's decision to perform such weddings. [read more]

May 16, 2004 - Detroit Free Press
BOSTON -- The Supreme Court refused Friday to block the nation's first state-sanctioned gay marriages from taking place next week. Without comment, the court declined to intervene and block clerks from issuing marriage licenses to gay couples in Massachusetts. That state's highest court ruled in November that the state Constitution allows gay couples to marry. The marriages are to start Monday. [read more]

May 9, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- Seventeen same-sex couples were wed during noon ceremonies Saturday at LeFevre House Bed and Breakfast on Southside Avenue. Four Unitarian Universalist ministers and one interfaith minister performed the marriages, said James Fallarino, spokesman for the New Paltz Equality Initiative. [read more]

April 29, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
Village of New Paltz Trustee Robert Hebel has the right to ask a court to bar Mayor Jason West from performing same-sex marriages. [read more]

April 25, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
The group is not an anti-gay campaign, Garrison said. Its message, she said, is homosexuality is an unhealthy and unnatural lifestyle and Jesus Christ can set anyone free from any si. [read more]

April 20, 2004 - NY Journal News
Thirteen gay and lesbian couples, including one from White Plains and another from Mount Vernon, sued New York state yesterday, seeking to declare the law that denies same-sex couples the right to marry unconstitutional. [read more]

April 10, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- Organizers of same-sex marriages in New Paltz have delivered $2,000 for police services associated with the controversial nuptials. But the costs accrued by town police have surpassed $13,000, and reimbursement funds are not assured for many of the expenses. [read more]

April 8, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
''We have been a couple for 23 years, and yet currently under New York law, we are not permitted a marriage license,'' said O'Donnell, who joined most of the other plaintiffs at a Manhattan news conference announcing the lawsuit. ''The time has come for that to end.'' [read more]

April 7, 2004 - NY Journal News Editorial
The protests and visit to Rockland County this week by congregants of Westboro Baptist Church, a sort of traveling sideshow featuring the most virulent anti-gay bias and hate, would be more alarming had the Topeka, Kan.-based group been able to boast larger numbers or claim more adherents. [read more]

April 6, 2004 - NY Journal News
As they did Sunday night in South Nyack, the church members and their young children — situated behind barriers across from the counterprotesters — carried various signs that said God hated gays and that thanked God for the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. One protester also dragged an American flag on the ground. [read more]

April 5, 2004 - NY Journal News
SOUTH NYACK — Hundreds carried placards and joined in song last night to express their displeasure with the nine members of a controversial Christian church from Kansas who vocally declared that God hates gays. [read more]

and from the Poughkeepsie Journal

An anti-gay group out of Kansas weaved their way through the Village of New Paltz Sunday morning with signs in hand and trails of police and counter-demonstrators behind them. [read more]

April 4, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
Starting at 8 a.m., a delegation from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., is scheduled to picket at New Paltz churches, the village hall, and the State University of New York at New Paltz. [read more]

April 3, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
''Here's a guy who literally could be litigated out of office, but he stood up for something that's bigger than that,'' Feinstein said. ''He, I think, is a role model that you can be in the system and make a difference. That emboldens a lot of people.'' [read more]

April 2, 2004 - Times Herald Record
If things go as planned on Sunday, a heaping helping of tolerance is what the emissaries from Phelps' fire-and-brimstone congregation will be served when they arrive to protest the recent spate of gay marriages that continue to be performed here by gay rights activists. [read more]

Poughkeepsie Journal Letters
I write in response to the comments made by Robert Hebel of New Paltz in a recent article about his harassment complaint against supporters of New Paltz Mayor Jason West.

and

If marriage is an essential building block for strong families and communities, then denying our marriages weakens our families and hurts our children. [read more]

March 31, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal Letters
As a member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Poughkeepsie, I am proud to support my minister, the Rev. Kay Greenleaf, in her stand on same-sex marriage. [read more]

and

It is New Paltz Mayor Jason West who is demonstrating the courage of his conviction to uphold his oath of office by insisting the State of New York abide by the supreme laws of the land. [read more]

March 29, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
From acceptance to recognition, life has changed for couples who wed a month ago in ceremonies that brought the nationwide gay marriage debate to New Paltz. Relationships have taken on new wrinkles and people treat them differently, they say. [read more]

March 29, 2004 - NY Journal News
Rights not granted to gay couples because they are banned from marriage include survivor's benefits, marriage tax bonuses, inheritances, the right to make burial decisions, and parental, pension and immigration rights, Levi said. [read more]

March 28, 2004 - New York Times
In town, West waves and is glad-handed by restaurant owners and shopkeepers, who have gotten over their initial fears that he might ban capitalism -- and he is now even semi-memorialized: on the day in early March when he was ordered to appear in court on charges of illegally marrying gay couples, the Gilded Otter, the local brewery, was selling Get Out of Jail Ale.
[read more] Link to th NY Times website - May require free registration

March 28, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
Saturday represented the fifth wave of same-sex weddings in the village, where Mayor Jason West launched them Feb. 27. He is under a temporary court order not to officiate. [read more]

March 26, 2004 - NY Journal News (White Plains)
It seems all three Abrahamic faiths have strayed from that "old-time religion." Better to embrace the logic of the Bill of Rights and keep religion out of our civil life. [read more]

March 23, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
''For me to risk spending one year in jail and paying a $500 fine is nothing, nothing compared to the length of time that those of us who are gay and lesbian have been waiting to get our civil rights,'' said the Rev. Kay Greenleaf. [read more]

March 21, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
''A small part of it is to make a statement that we're not second-class citizens,'' Cognetto said. But she added, it's also to ''publicly declare how we feel for each other.'' [read more]

March 20, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
Organizers who planned a fourth round of same-sex marriages here today switched locations after the owner of the club where the ceremonies were to take place got a warning from state liquor authorities, the club owner said Friday. [read more]

March 18, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
West, who appeared on NBC's ''Late Night with Conan O'Brien'' Tuesday, maintained his view same-sex marriages are a village obligation under equal-rights provisions of the state constitution. [read more]

March 16, 2004 - NY Journal News
Two Unitarian ministers — including one from Westchester — who married 25 gay couples in New Paltz this month were charged yesterday with performing the ceremonies without marriage licenses, setting the stage for a landmark legal battle that will pit the government against the churches on the issue for the first time. [read more]

March 14, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
A procession of cars, honking in celebration, delivered the couples. Families wept and friends fretted over the length of video tape available for recording. A picture-perfect pair of children served as flower girl and ring bearer for one lesbian marriage, and the girl left a trail of rose petals on the grass before the Water Street Market, where the ceremonies were held. [read more]

March 14, 2004 - Danbury News Times
Meanwhile, the group People of Faith for Gay Civil Rights held a rally on the Capitol’s south lawn. About 40 people carried signs saying "Civil Marriage is a Civil Right,” "How dare you use the Bible as a tool for oppression,” "End Marriage Segregation,” and other slogans. [read more]

March 14, 2004 - NY Journal News
NEW PALTZ — The 25 gay marriages that the local mayor performed outside Village Hall two weeks ago startled the nation, but here in the thick of things, the event was just another lurch to the left for a place with a history of progressive politics that began when French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution stepped off the boat centuries ago. [read more]

and a Bob Baird column:

Because we hadn't heard from any of our five Albany representatives about the issue since Bush's call for an amendment, I placed calls Friday morning to state Sen. Thomas P. Morahan, R-New City; and Assembly members Ryan Karben, D-Monsey; Alex Gromack, D-Congers; Nancy Calhoun, R-Blooming Grove, who represents Stony Point; and Howard Mills, R-Hamptonburgh, who represents parts of western Ramapo. [read more]

March 12, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
''This is his moment of truth,'' West added. ''History will remember him either as a bold leader in the most important civil rights issue of our day or as a defender of the discriminatory status quo.'' [read more]

March 11, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
New Paltz Mayor Jason West has asked a state appellate court to consider overturning an order banning him from performing same-sex marriages. [read more]

March 9, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
''I know the risks, but I knew the risks on Saturday, and that's not changed,'' said Greenleaf, who was herself married to her 61-year-old partner, Pat Sullivan, on Saturday. ''They're not any less or any worse than they were then, and I'm willing to take any risk that's involved at this point.' [read more]

March 7, 2004 - NY Journal News Editorial
The history in the making is the battle for civil rights being waged by gay people, and people of good will, in town halls, city halls and municipal clerks' offices, in locales across the country, from San Francisco to Massachusetts, from Portland, Ore., to New York's New Paltz. [read more]

March 6, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ -- Mayor Jason West won't be marrying any gay couples this weekend, but he's found a couple of pinch-hitters who have agreed to do so. The Rev. Kay Greenleaf, pastor of the Unitarian Fellowship of Poughkeepsie, said Friday she and the Rev. Dawn Sangrey, pastor of the Fourth Unitarian Society of Westchester in Mohegan Lake, expect to perform about 30 marriages today in a parking lot in the western end of the village.

March 4, 2004 - Times-Herald Record
Jason West, the first mayor to wed gay couples in New York state, became the first New Paltz mayor to be arrested on criminal charges. After his arraignment last night, he promised hundreds of cheering supporters that he would continue performing gay marriages on Saturday. [read more]

March 3, 2004 - Poughkeepsie Journal
Jason West faces 19 separate counts of ''solemnizing a marriage without a license,'' a misdemeanor, Ulster County District Attorney Donald Williams said. The same-sex unions took place Friday, thrusting West into an international limelight. [Read more]