Senator Ruben Diaz challenges Mayor Bloomberg bribes
With word at the Capitol being that same-sex marriage legislation may be on hold until next week, state Sen. Ruben Diaz, Sr. -- one of the measure's most vocal opponents -- is going after Mayor Bloomberg for supporting the bill.
State Senate GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos just said there is no decision to bring gay marriage out for a vote, our Glenn Blain told me. Skelos said they were still deliberating the religious exemption issue and working on changes to the bill.
Staffs will continue to work on the issue during the weekend but since Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver will be observing the Sabbath, not much official can be done until Sunday.
Meanwhile, the Rev. Diaz, who's taken plenty of heat from gay rights activists for his opposition to letting gays wed in New York, is calling out Bloomberg for hypocrisy.
"Bloomberg has been spending a lot of time and money in Albany to show how much he wants New York’s marriage laws redefined.
If we want to document the facts, one of the biggest impediments to same sex marriage rights in New York has been by Mayor Bloomberg," Diaz said in a statement.
The Bronx Democrat points to a 2005 ruling by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Doris Ling-Cohan which found that forbidding same-sex marriages was unconstitutional in New York.
The Bloomberg administration's Law Department successfully appealed the decision.
"That litigation has caused a lot of fighting and has cost a lot of money," Diaz said. "Now this year, because Mayor Bloomberg sees that Governor Andrew Cuomo and other leaders are getting close to a victory on gay marriage legislation, he has been spending a lot of his money to make people forget what he did.
"I believe that Mayor Bloomberg must be credited as having done a lot more than I have done to prevent gay marriage from being legal in New York."
Bloomberg, who made an emergency trip to the state Capitol yesterday to lobby fence-sitting GOP state Senators on the bill, spoke about his Albany meetings on marriage during his weekly radio appearance on WOR this morning.
"I said look, 'You've got to take a vote.' In a democracy, I always thought, elected officials, shouldn't hide behind 'Well, they didn't take a vote, therefore, which way did you want me to be? I am that way.'"
"They should stand up and be on record, whether they vote the way I would like them to or not," he continued, according to a transcript by our Jonathan Lemire. "Democracy, I think, is best served by elected officials explicitly saying what they stand for and why, and not try to hide behind, 'Well, I didn't get a chance to express myself.'
Deluded Bloomberg doesn't understand the concept of marriage when he says: "I happen to think very strongly that this is not a religious thing. Religious organizations should have every right to decide who they want to marry, whether they permit alcohol, you know. Religions do a lot of different things. This is the government. And the government should be separate from religion. And civil marriage - which, incidentally, in New York we allow religious leaders to do simultaneously with a religious marriage, but you don't have to have a clergy person marry you, you could have the justice of the peace of the mayor or that sort of thing. Government shouldn't discriminate. Courts have held separate but equal is not equal."
Bloomberg needs to be thrown out of office simply because of his ignorance and arrogance.
