Canada vote seen as influence in gay-marriage debate

By KEITH EDDINGS
keddings@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: June 30, 2005)

The vote in Canada's House of Commons to recognize gay marriages late Tuesday added to the accelerating but ricocheting developments involving the marriages that may continue today, when Spain's parliament also is expected to vote on whether to allow gays to wed in that heavily Catholic country.

Also this week, the head of the United Church of Christ called on the church's governing body to support gay marriages when it meets in Atlanta tomorrow, and New York state legislators took another tentative step toward recognizing gay couples when they voted to give them the right to control funeral arrangements when a partner dies.

Setbacks for gay marriage are piling up almost as fast. Earlier this month, a New Jersey appeals court upheld state laws banning same-sex marriage. In New York, at least five courts have issued conflicting opinions on the issue in the past year or so, most recently in Ithaca, where a state Supreme Court justice in February threw out a lawsuit brought by 25 gay couples who sued for the right to marry. Two of the suits include couples from Westchester and Rockland counties.

Yesterday, both advocates and opponents of gay marriage said the 158-to-133 vote in Canada's House of Commons to recognize gay marriage will influence the debate in the United States, where nearly 40 states have laws specifically banning gay marriage. Only Massachusetts allows gay marriages, although Vermont and Connecticut recognize gay civil unions that bestow virtually all of the rights of marriage.

"This is just a matter of time before this happens in the United States," said Elizabeth Cucinotta, a 35-year-old lawyer who lives in the Crestwood section of Yonkers with her partner, Kristine Stallone, 40, an accountant. "State by state, the U.S. will start to recognize gay marriage."

Stanley Tomkiel 3rd, an Eastchester resident who is president of the Catholic Coalition of Westchester, said Canada's full embrace of gay marriage is a blow to traditional marriage in this country.

"It's going to add to the momentum of the homosexual movement," Tomkiel said. "The Catholic Church is very clear on this: Catholics have a duty not only to support traditional marriage, but to oppose the legality of homosexual unions as marriage. Pope Benedict has made that clear."

While the battle over gay marriage rages in New York courts, the state Senate and Assembly have shown little interest in joining it. Bills that would either ban or recognize the unions have stalled for years in Albany, where legislators prefer bestowing rights on gay couples one by one, as they did this week with their vote giving gay partners the right to make funeral arrangements for each other.

New York also recognizes adoptions by gay couples, which will allow Stallone to adopt Cucinotta's baby when she gives birth in five months.

In a nonbinding opinion, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said last year that gay marriage is illegal in New York, but that the state must recognize gay marriages that are performed in other states and countries that allow them.