Of no consequence? Really?

According to Danny Hakim over at City Room, New York State Senate majority leader Joseph L. Bruno announced that the Senate will not be voting on gay marriages. His reasoning is that they have too many other matters to vote on to "spend hours debating an issues that, you know, is not going to be of consequence."

I find myself wondering what color the sky is in Mr. Bruno's world. Because if he honestly thinks that gay marriage is not going to be of consequence, it's quite clear that he doesn't live in the same world I do. One merely needs to look at the states who have rushed to create constitutional amendments to ban same sex marriages over the past few years to realize that Mr. Bruno is quite possibly the only person in the entire country that considers the matter so inconsequential.

Also, bear in mind that in New York, there are currently over 170 same sex couples who are seen as legally married. A court ruled that those New York couples who got married in Massachusetts prior to the July 2006 court ruling that determined that there was no constititional right to same sex marriage in New York had valid marriages. This fact alone makes same sex marriage something of a legal problem in this state. Suddenly, legal decisions on how to handle just those 170 marriages -- and how to verify that said marriage took place before the July 2006 deadline -- now have to be considered. In effect, same-sex marriage is going to have to be addressed by the legislature anyway, so Bruno is merely putting off the inevitible.

Of course, according to 365gay.com, Bruno is strongly opposed to gay marriages, which is the real reason he's intent on keeping this matter from a vote. Of course, this merely demonstrates that in the end, Bruno and those like him are concerned that the legislation could pass. So their only way of preventing it is to stop the vote from happening at all. This is a strange and hypocritcal move on the part of those belonging to a party who has be decrying that this matter should be decided by the legislature rather than "activist judges." Apparently, the legislature should only decide if the legislature happens to decide in Mr. Bruno's favor.

Hopefully, Mr. Bruno will discover just how "inconsequential" this issue is when he comes up for re-election.