Quotes From New York State Senators On Gay Marriage Bill
Below is a continuously updated and quick transcription of some statements being made right now on the floor of the New York State Senate as they debate the gay marriage bill today. Quotes are exact as I can manage! Refresh the page often – newest are at the bottom.
Eric Schneiderman: This is a vote that is not about morality, that is not about religion. You can’t legislate morality, but you can legislate justice. This is about the essence of the United States of America. Every generation is called to this challenge to the quintessential challenge of making Thomas Jefferson’s words more true. This bill hurts no one. Vote for justice, vote for equality, vote for your affirmation that all men and women are created equal.
Eric Adams: There are certain moments here where we can benchmark our lives by the votes we took. (Listed group of states) All states that bought and sold slaves at one time or another. It was only until 1967, before my son could marry (another senator’s) daughter. Thank God for Google. Go read what they said about blacks being able to marry. The same comment made about Tom Duane wanting to be married are the same comments my grandmother was told. Some say, don’t try to make this a civil rights issue. When I walk through these doors, my bible stays out. I make laws that protect the entire state. There is one thing about New York: We have the legacy that sets the tone of the rest of the country. I’m going to be an agent of change. You don’t have to be gay to respect the rights of those who are. You don’t have to be black to understand the pain of slavery.
Jeffery Klein: I’d like to apologize that this took so long. (Quotes from the 14th Amendment.) I think it’s important to read the statement from Mrs. Loving (Loving vs. Virginia) NYC will benefit by $200 million if we pass gay marriage. Make a decision today not based on political reasons. This is an issue of fairness.
David Valesky: This can’t be a matter of religion. Nothing we do can be done in violation of the United States Constitution. The founding fathers made it very clear that freedom of religion is one of the most important tenets of this democracy. This bill does not, could not, and as long as our constitution stands, could never compel any house of worship to do anything against their beliefs.
Kevin Parker: The time to pass this legislation is now, because it is still the right thing to do. The morality stands in doing the right thing. We have an opportunity to change our history. This is the time we strike a blow to one of the last inequalities in our country. (Reads benefits same sex couples cannot currently acquire.) This bill is about millions of families and the basic protections they need. As we sit here now its almost ridiculous to think that at one time African-Americans could not even marry each other. I’m hoping that the idea in a few years that same sex couples couldn’t marry will be seen as equally ridiculous.
Pedro Espada: If this vote were taken in my district today, this bill would fail. But this is not about demographics, this is not about religion. Is it a vote of conscience? What is a vote of conscience? It is constitutionally correct to vote “yes.” Let’s write this headline, let’s send a message of hope, by voting yes here today. Let’s not continue to be scared into ignorance.
Diane Savino: Rarely have we faced an issue as important as this. Tens of thousands of New Yorkers lives hang in the balance here today. I hope we are going to make that history here today. This vote is about an issue of fairness and equality. We in government don’t determine the quality or the validity of relationships, if we did we wouldn’t give three quarters of the licenses we do. What are we really protecting, when you look at the divorce rate in this country. We’re giving away husbands on a game show. That’s what we’ve done to marriage in America. People stand up in front of God and swear to honor and obey, and they don’t mean a word of it. We have nothing to fear from love and commitment.
Liz Krueger: Ask yourself, how can you vote “no.”
Daniel Squadron: It’s a bill that really has to do with what sort of government we have.
Velmanette Montgomery: I will only add that in my family and my culture I just want to remind my colleagues, it was always considered that if you were living together and not married, in those days, you were living in sin. I know the whole institution of marriage has changed over time. There are some states that actually recognized common law marriage. The institution of marriage is actually a part of our government contractual practice, and we also attach religion to it. I want to remind you that if a minister marries you, and you don’t go to court, you are not married. If our husbands decide, as often happens, that they want to run away, there are certain protections I want everyone to have. I want to talk about the ministers, the doctors, the choir directors, many of whom are gay, and people in all walks of life, African Americans, Latinos, white people, black people, men, women, they are my constituents too, they would like to have the right to marry. I am voting yes so you can have the right to marry.
Jose Serrano: This is a great day. History has proven that extending civil rights further will make our communities stronger. No one should be subjugated to less rights than anyone else. Extending freedom through marriage equality is the foundation of the American ideal. What separates this nation is that we dare to say the things that others refuse to say. We cannot be free until all of us are afforded the same rights that everyone should have.
Ruth Hassell-Thompson: My oldest brother was gay. Publicly that’s something I’ve not said before. (Told a very moving story about her brother and his life away from home in France.) People have the right to choose. This bill is about giving them the right to choose. If there’s a condemnation in that choice then that is between them and God.
Craig Johnson: On January 10th, 1998, I exercised my right to marry my wife. This bill is simple, it does two things. It’s about equality. The notion of a civl union creates a separate but equal system. This bill is also about love. What’s interesting is look at the history of marriage. Historically marriage wasn’t about love it was about property. This is about civil marriage. There comes a time for this body to step up.
Bill Perkins: History reminds me that more than half of the people here would not be during another point in time. Get ready, marriage equality is here, it is inevitable. I can see Dr. Martin Luthor King smiling down on us today.
Suzi Oppenheimer: I’m glad we’re doing this today. I feel strongly that everyone is entitled to equal rights and protections. It is most assuredly a civil issue not a religious issue. Some have said it diminishes their marriage. I don’t understand that. Almost all of us have friends who are lesbian or gay. And they are for the most part in serious committed relationships in long standing. They are stable people. Isn’t that what we want?
Malcolm Smith: People are asking me, “Why are you supporting marriage?” When I ask them is why are you not? They retreat to the bible. The bible does not say same sex marriage is wrong. What is wrong is when you quote a bible for your own purposes. Please don’t quote the bible or refer to it if you don’t know what it means. Because of my religious relationships, I believe everyone in this chamber has experienced discrimination. When you experienced discrimination, it hurt. The completion of a family is not the children but a marriage. This is not a challenge to the church. It takes one. Rosa Parks was that one. Tom Duane is that one. Colleagues, we need to do this today. A win is 35 votes.
Thomas Duane: “I’m like a dog with a bone, I won’t let go until the last moment. The time is never right for civil rights. The economy, wars… it’s never, ever the right time for civil rights. But the paradox is it’s always the right time to be on the right side of history. Now is the time to put that into law – the same way that we have treated you, you have treated us. let’s not have a do-over. I was out when Harvey Milk was around, I’ve been gay a long time. Soon, I’m going to be a married gay.
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Since at least 2012 Donald Trump has been engaging in election denialism. Now, a tenet of the Republican Party, the refusal to accept official election results they don’t like is ingrained in a large number of his followers.
“I think that the powers that be on the Democratic side have figured out a way to circumvent democracy,” Darlene Anastas, 69, of Middleborough, Massachusetts, told NBC News. The network “spoke to more than 50 Trump supporters, most of whom said they don’t believe Biden can win legitimately in November.”
“Poll after poll,” NBC also reported, “has found that a large proportion of the Republican electorate believes the only reasons Joe Biden is president are voter fraud and Democratic dirty tricks, buying into former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the 2020 election.”
NBC spoke with 72-year old George Crosby, from Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire, who said, Democrats “cheat like crazy” (video below).
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“I think they cheated before, and I think they’re going to try to do it again, because they’re a bunch of communists,” Fitzwilliam added.
38-year old James Russon of Eagle Mountain, Utah told NBC, “There’s no way Biden could legally … win without unfair means.”
“He added that the only way Biden could prevail would be through ‘cheating’ or ‘a lot of deceased people voting.'”
62-year old Randall Minicola of Las Vegas said it would be “impossible” for Biden to win. “I don’t think he’s got a following. I mean, you look who’s behind him — the only thing he’s got is ghosts behind him. That’s what I believe. Where’s the supporters then? Are they in the basement with him? I don’t think so.”
NBC News did not report on where these particular GOP voters got their information or how they came to believe these claims, but it did note the “possibility of another election in which large numbers of Republicans refuse to accept a Biden victory has also been stoked by influential conservatives.”
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Trump’s election denialism is so strong that in 2020 CNN published “A list of the times Trump has said he won’t accept the election results or leave office if he loses.”
Election denialism continues to be spread throughout the right.
“A senile man is not going to get elected in the most powerful country in the world unless there’s fraud,” former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in March, NBC noted. Carlson, a purveyor of conspiracy theories, has spoken very positively about Russia and its authoritarian president, Vladimir Putin, and against Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Numerous studies and fact checks have found mail-in voting to be safe and secure, with little opportunity for fraud, yet just last week Carlson, like Trump, was claiming massive election fraud. Undermining Americans’ faith in democracy was a main goal of Russian President Putin’s 2016 attack on the U.S. elections, according to a 2017 report issued by a group of U.S. Intelligence agencies.
But just last week Carlson claimed, “About one in five mail-in ballots in the last election was fraudulent, handing Biden the presidency. We know this because the people who committed the fraud have admitted it in a new poll.”
A portion of NBC’s report from Thursday also appears in this January 2024 NBC News video.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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News
Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won
Falsely claiming he won the state of Wisconsin in the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump is now refusing to commit to accepting the 2024 results for the Badger State this November.
In an interview with Wisconsin’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Trump appeared to dance around the issue, declaring he would only accept the official results “if everything’s honest.”
“If everything’s honest, I’d gladly accept the results,” Trump told the paper’s Alison Dirr and Molly Beck in an interview Wednesday. “If it’s not, you have to fight for the right of the country.”
“But if everything’s honest, which we anticipate it will be — a lot of changes have been made over the last few years — but if everything’s honest, I will absolutely accept the results,” he said.
The Journal Sentinel reports Trump “offered similar conditions when asked the same question by news outlets in 2016 and 2020.”
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“I’d be doing a disservice to the country if I said otherwise,” he said.
In that interview Trump once again falsely claimed he won Wisconsin in 2020, a state President Joe Biden actually won by more than 20,000 votes.
“If you go back and look at all of the things that had been found out, it showed that I won the election in Wisconsin,” Trump told the newspaper. “It also showed I won the election in other locations.”
Trump’s “Big Lie,” that the 2020 election was “rigged” against him, along with his support for the January 6, 2021 insurrection, have been central to his 2024 campaign.
“Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the last presidential election in Wisconsin and his new comments placing conditions on when he would accept the results of the next election come as Republicans are seeking to persuade GOP voters to restore their trust in the state’s system of elections and embrace absentee voting,” the Journal Sentinel reported. “There’s no evidence to support that Wisconsin’s election was tainted by cheating or fraud in 2020. The results have been confirmed by recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties that Trump paid for, court rulings, a nonpartisan state audit and a study by the conservative legal firm Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty, among other analyses.”
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In October of 2016, weeks before Election Day, during the final presidential debate, Trump was asked if he would make the commitment “that you will absolutely accept the results of this election?”
“I will look at it at the time,” Trump replied. “I’m not looking at anything now, I’ll look at it at the time.”
He then went on to sow doubt about the credibility of the election.
Trump’s refusal to accept election results stretches back more than a decade, even before he ran for president.
After he refused to accept his loss in 2020, ABC News reported “Trump has longstanding history of calling elections ‘rigged’ if he doesn’t like the results.”
“On election night in 2012, when President Barack Obama was reelected, Trump said that the election was a ‘total sham’ and a ‘travesty,’ while also making the claim that the United States is ‘not a democracy’ after Obama secured his victory.
“We can’t let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!” Trump wrote on Twitter
One month later, in December of 2012, Trump tweeted, “The electoral college is a disaster for a democracy.” Ironically, four years later he became president after losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, but winning the Electoral College.
Watch the video above or at this link.
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President Joe Biden made rare, unscheduled remarks from the White House Thursday morning, denouncing the recent violent protests on college campuses, and telling Americans there is “no place” for antisemitism anywhere across the nation. He also denounced “hate speech” and “racism,” while declaring his support for the right to peacefully protest.
“There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students,” President Biden declared. “There is no place for hate speech, or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans. It’s simply wrong. There’s no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.”
“Violent protest is not protected,” Biden said strongly. “Peaceful protest is.”
Stressing “the right to free speech,” and the people’s right “to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard,” President Biden also declared the importance of “the rule of law.”
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“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent,” the President also said, praising the ideal of peaceful protests, which he said are in the “best tradition of how Americans respond to consequential issues.”
“But,” he added, “neither are we a lawless country. We are a civil society and order must prevail.”
Biden on campus protests: “We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people or squash dissent. The people are heard. In fact, peaceful protest is in the best tradition of how Americans respond to controversial issues. But neither are we a lawless country.” pic.twitter.com/1HYLVmbN2D
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 2, 2024
America is a “big, diverse, free thinking and freedom-loving nation,” Biden said, denouncing those “who rush in to score political points.”
“This isn’t a moment for politics, it’s a moment for clarity.”
“It’s against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations. None of this is a peaceful protest,” he warned. “Threatening people, intimidating people. instilling fear in people is not peaceful protest. It’s against the law. Dissent is essential to democracy but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish a semester and their college education.”
Biden: Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It is against the law. Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations, none of this is a peaceful protest. pic.twitter.com/0Nkttggsy4
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 2, 2024
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“Look. It’s basically a matter of fairness. It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”
“I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions in America. We respect the right and protect the right for them to express that. But it doesn’t mean anything goes. It needs to be done without violence. Without destruction, without hate, and within the law. And I’ll make no mistake. As President, I will always defend free speech. And I will always be just as strong standing up for the rule of law. That’s my responsibility to you the American people. My obligation to the Constitution.”
The President also responded to reporters’ questions, including saying he saw no need to call up the National Guard.
Watch the videos above or at this link.
Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash
Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won
‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism
Election Denialism Embraced by ‘Large Proportion’ of Trump’s Followers: Report
Election Denialism Embraced by ‘Large Proportion’ of Trump’s Followers: Report
Trump Won’t Commit to Accepting Election Results if He Doesn’t Win State He Falsely Claims He Won
‘No Place for Antisemitism’: Biden Denounces Violent Campus Protests, Hate Speech and Racism
Noem Insists 14 Month Old Dog She Shot Was ‘Not a Puppy’ Sparking New Backlash
‘Antisemitism Is Wrong, But’: Marjorie Taylor Greene Pilloried for Promoting Antisemitic Claim
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