Molly Blooms, a Victorian-accented Irish bar in Sunnyside, Queens, recently raffled off a free same-sex wedding reception, with a three-hour open bar, a D.J., a photographer and a horse-drawn gilded carriage to deliver the winning couple to the festivities. The bar’s owner thought the idea would be good for business and for the largely working-class and immigrant neighborhood.

But some in the community disagreed.

Neighbors said they would boycott the bar. Bloggers posted reports of past health violations there. Larry Yang, the Korean-American owner of a hardware store next door, said he resented such a public promotion of same-sex marriage. He said many among the large number of Korean-American Christians in Queens felt similarly but feared that if they spoke out they would be demonized by a liberal majority.

“If that horse-drawn carriage rides by my store, I will make sure my kids do not see it,” Mr. Yang, 45, said. “I am worried about what kind of message gay marriage is sending.” ...

The owner of Molly Blooms, Ciaran Staunton — a heterosexual married father of two and a Roman Catholic — said he was determined to be part of what he called “the last great civil rights battle.”

He said most in the neighborhood had welcomed the idea of a free same-sex wedding reception.

“There are always going to be some naysayers who don’t like it,” said Mr. Staunton, 48, who came to New York from County Mayo, Ireland, nearly 20 years ago.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, Islam, New York, Orthodox Christianity, race, religion

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The police found about 10 grams of marijuana, or about a third of an ounce, when they searched Penelope Harris’s apartment in the Bronx last year. The amount was below the legal threshold for even a misdemeanor, and prosecutors declined to charge her. But Ms. Harris, a mother whose son and niece were home when she was briefly in custody, could hardly rest easy.

The police had reported her arrest to the state’s child welfare hot line, and city caseworkers quickly arrived and took the children away.

Her son, then 10, spent more than a week in foster care. Her niece, who was 8 and living with her as a foster child, was placed in another home and not returned by the foster care agency for more than a year. Ms. Harris, 31, had to weather a lengthy child neglect inquiry, though she had no criminal record and had never before been investigated by the child welfare authorities, Ms. Harris and her lawyer said.

“I felt like less of a parent, like I had failed my children,” Ms. Harris said. “It tore me up.”

Hundreds of New Yorkers who have been caught with small amounts of marijuana, or who have simply admitted to using it, have become ensnared in civil child neglect cases in recent years, though they did not face even the least of criminal charges, according to city records and defense lawyers. A small number of parents in these cases have even lost custody of their children.

New York City’s child welfare agency said that it was pursuing these cases for appropriate reasons, and that marijuana use by parents could often hint at other serious problems in the way they cared for their children.

Labels: children, culture, custody, foster parenting, New York, parenting, race

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Though he approves of New York State’s new law allowing same-sex marriage, Rabbi Allan Schranz of the Sutton Place Synagogue, a Conservative congregation in Manhattan, will not officiate at a wedding ceremony for same-sex couples, pointing out that his reasons, though partly rooted in Jewish traditions, are mostly rooted in his personal traditions.

“I won’t participate because I’ve never done it and don’t want to start at this stage of my career,” said Rabbi Schranz, 64, who has been a rabbi for almost 40 years. “I’m not going to change, but if somebody else wants to do it, I’ll support that.”

But at another Conservative congregation, Temple Israel Center in White Plains, Rabbi Gordon Tucker, 60, the synagogue’s leader, performed a Jewish ceremony a year ago for two young gay men who had been civilly married in Connecticut. On Saturday, the first anniversary of the wedding, the men were called up for an aliyah, a blessing they said over the Torah, and their parents sponsored the celebratory kiddush, the postworship meal for congregants.

“It’s not controversial in the congregation,” said Rabbi Tucker, a former dean of the rabbinical school at the Jewish Theological Seminary, the movement’s fountainhead. “Over a period of years we have reached a consensus and people supported my position.”

The two rabbis’ contrasting viewpoints are reflective of the wide disagreement within Conservative Judaism on an issue that continues to roil many of its synagogues even after passage of laws in New York and five other states that legalize same-sex marriage. ...

Those rabbis who do perform same-sex ceremonies improvise the language. When Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky, 45, the leader of Temple Ansche Chesed on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, performed a wedding for two men several years ago, he eliminated some phrases from the traditional Jewish service, using “loving companion” instead of terms like bride and groom. He sees such changes as a “creative betrayal of tradition” by “finding ways to sanctify love and commitment.” But he insisted that some elements from the traditional ceremony remain ironclad, like commitments to sexual exclusivity and mutual care.

Labels: Conservative Judaism, culture, gay marriage, Judaism, Marriage, New York, religion

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While New York's gay couples are lining up to get hitched, straight ones are increasingly untying the knot.

Divorce filings are up 12 percent since the state last October adopted no-fault separations, which allows couples to split without having to prove why.

"It's still going to the dentist," said lawyer Raoul Felder. "But now you go to a painless dentist. There's a certain percentage of people who do it now that wouldn't have before."

There were 37,015 divorce filings statewide from October 2010 through this May, compared to 33,160 in the year-ago period, according to court data.

Labels: divorce, Marriage, New York, no-fault divorce

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The year was 1936, and Jane H. Todd, a state assemblywoman from Westchester County, went to Albany with a warning: the institution of marriage was under siege.

Too many frivolous youngsters were falling in love and eloping on a whim, only to have their marriages end in divorce. These “gin weddings,” as Ms. Todd called them, had to stop.

After two years of lobbying, Ms. Todd, a Republican, persuaded her fellow legislators to enact a law mandating a three-day waiting period between receiving a marriage license and being wed.

The law, and others like it around the country, became so notorious that in 1945 Hollywood made a film, “The Clock,” starring Judy Garland, about a young soldier who falls in love during a two-day leave in New York and tries to find a judge to waive the waiting period so he can marry.

Today, New York’s waiting period, which has been shortened to 24 hours, is back in the limelight because of the legalization of same-sex marriage. Many gay couples want to get married on the first possible day, July 24, and they are now scrambling — in many cases with the help of municipal officials — to find judges who will waive the waiting period.

“We think of Hollywood movies about changes of mind at the altar, but these are couples that have been together for many, many years and have been waiting impatiently to tie the knot,” said Susan Sommer, the director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, an organization that advocates for equal rights for gay people. “They certainly have had a long time to get to know each other.”

Labels: culture, gay marriage, heteronormativity, Marriage, New York

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After New York state legalized same sex marriage over the weekend, someone at the Brown Coffee Company out of San Antonio, Texas decided to publicly share their opinion on the matter and tweeted, "No human law can ever legitimize what natural law precludes. #SorryFolks #NotEqual #WhyBother #ChasingAfterTheWind #SelfEvident."

And here comes the [s***storm] and lost business: RBC NYC, a New York City coffee shop announced on its Tumblr that they've pulled the company's coffee: "Although we won’t tell you what RBC stands for, we’ll let you know it doesn’t stand for intolerance and bigotry, therefore we will not be doing business with The Brown Coffee Co. anymore."

Labels: culture, gay marriage, New York

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The poorest place in the United States is not a dusty Texas border town, a hollow in Appalachia, a remote Indian reservation or a blighted urban neighborhood. It has no slums or homeless people. No one who lives there is shabbily dressed or has to go hungry. Crime is virtually nonexistent.

And, yet, officially, at least, none of the nation’s 3,700 villages, towns or cities with more than 10,000 people has a higher proportion of its population living in poverty than Kiryas Joel, N.Y., a community of mostly garden apartments and town houses 50 miles northwest of New York City in suburban Orange County.

About 70 percent of the village’s 21,000 residents live in households whose income falls below the federal poverty threshold, according to the Census Bureau. Median family income ($17,929) and per capita income ($4,494) rank lower than any other comparable place in the country. Nearly half of the village’s households reported less than $15,000 in annual income.

About half of the residents receive food stamps, and one-third receive Medicaid benefits and rely on federal vouchers to help pay their housing costs.

Kiryas Joel’s unlikely ranking results largely from religious and cultural factors. Ultra-Orthodox Satmar Hasidic Jews predominate in the village; many of them moved there from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, beginning in the 1970s to accommodate a population that was growing geometrically.

Women marry young, remain in the village to raise their families and, according to religious strictures, do not use birth control. As a result, the median age (under 12) is the lowest in the country and the household size (nearly six) is the highest. Mothers rarely work outside the home while their children are young. ...

Still, poverty is largely invisible in the village. Parking lots are full, but strollers and tricycles seem to outnumber cars. A jeweler shares a storefront with a check-cashing office. To avoid stigmatizing poorer young couples or instilling guilt in parents, the chief rabbi recently decreed that diamond rings were not acceptable as engagement gifts and that one-man bands would suffice at weddings. Many residents who were approached by a reporter said they did not want to talk about their finances.

Labels: class, culture, economics, family size, Hasidic Judaism, Judaism, New York, Orthodox Judaism, poverty, religion, weddings

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Last summer, former Governor Paterson signed a bill making New York the 50th and final state to enact no-fault divorce. Sponsors said a complaint for no-fault divorce would be irrefutable and thus obviate the need for any trial whatsoever with respect to grounds. I was heartbroken when I heard about the bill; to me, standing up for marriage and family in America now was truly an impossible dream.

Under the new statute, parties no longer need prove fault or that they've lived apart under a separation agreement for one year in order to obtain a divorce. Now, they can opt for no-fault by alleging under oath that the marriage has "broken down irretrievably for a period of at least six months." According to Elliott Scheinberg, an appellate attorney whose practice is limited to matrimonial law, the statute allows for unilateral exit from marriage based solely on the subjective view of the party suing for divorce, no defense to no-fault permissible. In other words, presumably, merely swearing under oath makes it so. Pleading specifics, he says, can also open up a "can of worms."

Well, the can of worms has now been opened. On Friday, Veronica O'Dell, counsel for the defense in Strack v. Strack, received a copy of a notice of appeal to the New York Appellate Division, Third Department, challenging the decision of Justice Robert Muller of the Supreme Court in Essex County. The pending appeal indicates that the celebrants who pushed through New York's no-fault may have uncorked the champagne a bit too early. (This is despite rumors that judges in Manhattan are placing their stamp of approval on no-fault divorce purely on the basis of the moving party's sworn statement.)

In Strack, Justice Muller held that the defendant was entitled to a trial to determine if the parties' 47-year marriage had "broken down irretrievably." ...

The upshot is anyone's guess at this point. Those familiar with the no-fault battle may recall that one of the reasons floated for the new statute was the elimination of institutionalized perjury - for years spouses who wanted to get around the statute had been cooking up fault, with one party agreeing to lie under oath and assume the blame. Yet isn't the sham that was drummed up to replace it, where cause is purportedly unnecessary and one party is able to chuck a marriage and family, far worse? Isn't an "irretrievably broken" standard meaningless if its only purpose is to give the law a veneer of respectability, when in fact divorce can be granted on one party's subjective say so alone? Indeed, if one spouse can obtain a divorce merely for the asking, lying is simply irrelevant, as are the reasons for wanting out, including that the marriage is "irretrievably broken." How is no-fault divorce then any different from saying "I divorce you three times?" Perhaps that's just what nagged at Justice Muller.

Labels: divorce, New York, no-fault divorce

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Governor Andrew Cuomo has seen fit to invite his girlfriend of five years, the statuesque blonde Sandra Lee, into the Governor’s mansion. Sandra Lee has a cooking show I actually like called Semi-Homemade in which she gives tips on how to entertain so it appears you made various dishes from scratch. Andrew Cuomo also seems like a sober-minded Democrat. Nonetheless, this spectacle is a good gauge of the decline of marriage particularly in the East.

Andrew Cuomo’s father is the famously Catholic and famously uxorious Mario Cuomo. Andrew married into the Kennedy family and that marriage ended in divorce. The Cuomos are from Queens. Their support began in the conservative, Democratic Catholic neighborhoods there (where my family is also from). The fact that Andrew Cuomo will suffer little from shacking up with his girlfriend in a house provided by the taxpayers of New York and suffer no political consequences underlines the decline of marriage. What does his father think about this? There is a Sicilian word made famous by The Sopranos for this type of relationship. I would be stunned if Mr. Cuomo’s mother would not use it in this instance.

Labels: Catholic Church, cohabitation, culture, New York, religion

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For years, I fought in court to stop him from ending our marriage. Now that NY has become the 50th state to enact no-fault divorce, women no longer have that option. ...

I’m not sure my attorney thought I’d actually try and exercise my right to keep my family together. But that’s what I did. In any other state it would have been impossible. But in 2003, New York was the last state in America that still didn't have no-fault divorce on the books. After California passed America's first no-fault law in 1970, divorce frenzy swept the nation, and by 1985, every state in the country had followed suit–every state except for New York, where my husband and I happened to live.

When I refused a quickie divorce on his terms, he served me with divorce papers filled with baseless complaints.

“The whole thing is a pack of lies,” I said to my attorney, sobbing. “He’s the one committing adultery.”

“Then deny it, and sue him for divorce,” Saul said.

“But I don’t want a divorce,” I cried. “I love my husband.” Twenty years wasn’t something I wanted to chuck overnight. Made of strong Southern female stock, I grew up believing the words “until death do us part” were non-negotiable. Family was paramount, and divorce virtually unheard of. “I don’t think there’s anything in life that can’t be forgiven,” my aunt said when I asked for her advice. To me, that pretty much covered the whole territory.

One night when I was up reluctantly working on the divorce papers, my eldest daughter appeared by my side. “I don’t want you to get a divorce,” she said. I didn’t either. Yet until this moment, it hadn't occurred to me that I had the power to stop this from happening. I realized perhaps the break-up of my marriage wasn't inevitable and that by standing up, maybe I could also help others.

Labels: culture, divorce, divorce reform, New York

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Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday announced a broad initiative to help fathers become more active and productive members of their families.

The push includes more than a dozen programs aimed at educating and supporting fathers and fathers-to-be, Mr. Bloomberg said.

Programs include parenting classes at public hospitals and homeless shelters, a part-time education program at the City University of New York and the addition of family visiting centers in city prisons.

The city will also soon hire its first citywide fatherhood services coordinator, Mr. Bloomberg said.

The goal, Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference in Queens, was “to make city services more accessible to fathers and to make city spaces, our housing, schools, hospitals and even our jails, places where fathers can connect with their children.”

Labels: culture, Fathers, men, New York, poverty

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In 1969, Gov. Ronald Reagan of California signed the nation’s first no-fault divorce law. He later called it the worst mistake of his life. But other states eventually followed California’s lead, and no-fault — under which one spouse can end a marriage, with no proof required of wrongdoing by either party — more or less became law of the land. New York State was the longtime holdout, since South Dakota passed its law in 1985.

That may be about to change. On Tuesday evening, the State Senate approved legislation that would permit no-fault divorce after a marriage has “irretrievably” broken down for six months or more, without the need to identify a fault, like adultery or abandonment. The package must still pass the State Assembly, which is considering two bills that would adopt some version of no-fault divorce.

New York’s failure to permit more accessible divorce has long been denounced as archaic, but longtime opponents of “liberalization” have included the Catholic Church and the New York chapter of the National Organization for Women.

What should the New York Legislature consider as it works out the details of its no-fault measures? What do we know about the effects of no-fault laws in the rest of the country?

* Betsey Stevenson, economist, University of Pennsylvania
* Robin Fretwell Wilson, law professor, Washington and Lee University
* Andrew J. Cherlin, professor of sociology, Johns Hopkins
* Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Institute for American Values
* Marcia Pappas, New York president, National Organization for Women

Labels: divorce, divorce reform, domestic violence, feminism, New York, no-fault divorce

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Debra H. is the mother of her six-year-old son, a child she raised with Janice R,. her ex-partner who is the child's biological mother. So ruled the New York Court of Appeals today (and that's the highest court in NY, so their decision is final). For that reason, press reports, at least the early ones, refer to the opinion as expanding the rights of gay parents.

Not so fast. What the court actually did was limit the rights of children of same-sex couples to a relationship with only one parent, unless the parents married each other (or entered a civil union or a domestic partnership comferring all the rights of marriage) or completed a second-parent adoption. (Debra H. and Janice R. were in a Vermont civil union.) This is not good news. Children are not supposed to suffer for the decision of their parents not to marry. That has been an elemental principle of family law for more than four decades. Yet suffer they will, those New York children, because apparently that principle goes out the window when it comes to lesbian couples raising children.

New York is not an isolated case. In Massachusetts, where same-sex couples have been allowed to marry for six years, a child born to a married lesbian couple is the child of both parents, but a child born to an unmarried couple, under identical circumstances (such as conception using an unknown donor) has only one parent, unless the nonbiological parent completes a second-parent adoption. Such adoptions take time and money, both often in short supply. (In a New Jersey cases a few years back, the couple made the economically sensible decision to have their second child and then go through one adoption proceeding for both of them. Unfortunately, the nonbio mom died unexpectedly before any adoption took place, and the child was unable to collect social security survivors benefits because under the law he had only one parent.) I have said repeatedly (and it's the title of my new Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties article), A Mother Should Not Have to Adopt Her Own Child.

Labels: civil unions, custody, de facto parenting, gay couples, gay marriage, gay parenting, Massachusetts, New York

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The Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion advocacy group, has bought 13 1/3 hours of airtime on country, Christian and news radio stations for a radio ad supporting Doug Hoffman, the Conservative candidate for the 23rd Congressional District.

Executive Director Marjorie Dannenfelser told me Sunday that her group is part of a larger coalition of conservative groups spending $350,000 to get Mr. Hoffman elected. The body includes the National Organization for Marriage, Campaign for Working Families and the Eagle Forum, among others.

Labels: New York, NOM

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Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York told CNA last week that the Catholic Church is currently facing many challenges, four being: the vocation to marriage, the state of Catholic parishes and schools, the great number of lapsed Catholics and finally the difficulties in a culture desperate to keep the Church and morals out of the public square. ...

The archbishop then broke down Jesus’ words into four practical challenges the Church currently faces in preaching the Gospel to all people, the first being the instability of marriage and family.

“That’s where we have the real vocation crisis,” he remarked, noting that “only 50% of our Catholic young people are getting married.”

“We have a vocation crisis to life-long, life-giving, loving, faithful marriage. If we take care of that one, we’ll have all the priests and nuns we need for the church,” Dolan said.

Labels: Catholic Church, demographics, Marriage, New York, religion

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The argument over whether State Senate lawmakers should approve a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in New York continued in downtown Buffalo on Sunday when a large church group prayed publicly to uphold marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

About 100 churchgoers gathered outside the Mahoney State Office Building in Niagara Square hoping to influence state officials to stop Senate Bill 4401, which would legalize same-sex marriage in New York.

The Rev. William Gillison, pastor of Mount Olive Baptist Church, a large African- American congregation on East Delavan Avenue in Buffalo, led the group’s prayer at about 2 p. m. ...

The New York legislation, which is supported by Gov. David A. Paterson, once seemed well on its way to approval, but opposition has been growing.

A poll released last week by the Siena Research Institute found New Yorkers evenly divided on the issue, with 46 percent in favor and 46 percent against. A month earlier, the poll showed 53 percent in favor, compared with 29 percent against.

Labels: gay marriage, New York, religion

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Religious leaders opposed to gay marriage in New York State would have a “better moral standing” in the raging debate over the issue had they spoken out against discrimination and other abuses gays suffered in years past, Gov. David A. Paterson said Tuesday.

The governor’s statements led to an immediate rebuke from leaders of various religious organizations statewide.

“That’s his right to take a position and say what he wants regarding religious leaders, but our position is not mandated by government. We take our direction from the word of God,” said the Rev. Robert L. Sanders Jr., an opponent of gay marriage who is pastor of Greater Refuge Temple of Christ, an influential black church in Buffalo.

Before an Albany crowd of about 2,000 gay and lesbian advocates of marriage-equality laws, the governor and other supporters lashed out at opponents of expanding marital laws as they stepped up efforts to have New York join several other states where gays can legally marry.

While Paterson urged the advocates to show “respect”’ to people who oppose gay marriage on religious grounds, he said many critics are suffering from he called a “five-letter word: guilt.”

“You see, the fact is that for years these same individuals — many of them, not all of them, but many of them—who pronounced religious doctrine did not exercise it when young gay and lesbian students were being bullied and chastised for expressing their points of view,” Paterson said to the cheering audience, which gave him two standing ovations during his brief appearance.

“Where were these leaders of faith when college students of gay and lesbian orientation were beaten and often brutalized for expressing their feelings to each other?” Paterson said.

Labels: culture, gay marriage, New York

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Gov. Paterson's impassioned bid to legalize gay marriage in New York seems doomed in the state Senate.

Paterson introduced legislation to legalize same-sex marriage, comparing it to the battle to abolish slavery in the 1800s.

"This is a civil rights issue and civil rights don't wait for the right time," Paterson said at a packed news conference that included Mayor Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, elected officials and gay rights advocates.

"Rights should not be stifled by fear. Silence should not be a response to injustice. If we take no action, we will surely lose."

Paterson's plea showed little sign of swaying opponents or even coming to a vote in the Senate, where Democrats hold a slim 32-30 majority.

Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith (D-Queens), who supports gay marriage, said there are not enough votes for it to pass.

"As soon as we have the votes necessary for passage, we will bring it up for a vote," Smith spokesman Austin Shafran said. "Right now, there are not sufficient votes."

The Assembly has approved a gay-marriage bill and is expected to support Paterson's legislation.

The Senate's GOP leadership and several Democratic senators, including Ruben Diaz Sr. of the Bronx and George Onorato of Queens, oppose the bill.

Labels: gay marriage, New York

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Only hours after Gov. David A. Paterson said he would introduce legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, about 100 people attended a meeting on Thursday at the Christian Community Neighborhood Church in the Bronx, where State Senator Rubén Díaz Sr. is the pastor, to discuss plans to protest.

Mr. Díaz, a conservative Democrat and a Pentecostal minister, is one of the staunchest opponents of same-sex marriages in New York. Democrats took control of the State Senate in November, but they hold a slim majority, 32 to 30, and their leaders are fearful of alienating Mr. Díaz and others by holding a vote on same-sex marriage.

The church meeting, led by Mr. Diaz, was organized by the New York Hispanic Clergy Association. In attendance were Hispanic bishops and pastors from churches across the city, as well as some congregants.

Mr. Díaz told those in attendance that they were starting to plan a large rally to be held some time in May.

Labels: gay marriage, New York

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The governor of New York is championing a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state and heralding the legislation as the next step in the advancement of civil rights in the Empire State.

Gov. David Paterson (D) introduced the legislation in the New York Assembly on Thursday and urged its passage at a news conference, despite concerns that the measure may not have enough votes for passage in the state Senate.

Labels: gay marriage, New York

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