Felder: His Quinn no-vote makes some gay leaders squirm

​by T.J. Raphael

Last week Wayne Barrett criticized newly elected Comptroller John Liu for his appointment of Deputy Comptroller Simcha Felder, a city councilman who had refused to support human rights and gay equality bills that Liu himself has supported.

Felder, for example, ducked two council votes for Christine Quinn because she's a lesbian (he's an Orthodox Jew).

The Voice reached out to leaders and activists in the gay community asking them for their thoughts on Felder's appointment. Some, like Council Members Rosie Mendez and James Van Bramer, State Assembly Members Deborah Glick and Daniel O'Donnell, declined to comment after numerous calls for a statement. Quinn herself has also not commented on Felder's non-vote.

Council Member Daniel Dromm was more forthcoming, saying that gay leaders were choosing not to be critical. "I hope for growth, but I don't condemn people outright," he says.

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We're not very big on this social media stuff, but many passages from the National Center for Lesbian Rights' Twitter coverage of the Prop 8 trial -- which the Supreme Court will not allow to be televised or even YouTubed -- read, especially in this context, like tragicomedy told by telegraphy. Read from bottom to top above the story of Ryan Kendall, whose parents tried to de-gay him with the sort of love and understanding American homosexuals have come to expect from their families. (A more humorous account takes place earlier, when "Kendall said [gay-straightener Joe] niccolosi introduced him to man named 'kelly' who supposedly was cured of being gay... But when niccolosi left room, kelly said he was going to a gay bar that night & was only pretending to please his parents.")

​The US Supreme Court has pulled the plug on broadcasting the historic Prop 8 federal trial, beginning today in San Francisco.

Last week, Judge Vaughn Walker made the decision to allow delayed televised coverage of the trial. Video coverage was to be available regularly on YouTube, though Walker was still considering actual live broadcasting. The Courage Campaign solicited more than 140,000 signatures of support for televising the trial.

Proponents of Prop 8 feared that their witnesses would be intimidated out of giving honest testimony. The decision not to televise the trial is treated with glee by Michelle Malkin, who, like Ed Meese, is unhappy that the trial is being held in San Francisco, a city that overwhelmingly voted against Prop 8. (The U.S. District Court of Northern California is located in San Francisco, the couples suing live in that district, and the City of San Francisco is itself a plaintiff in the lawsuit.)

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When Ford ran for the Senate in his old home state in 2006, he supported the Defense of Marriage Act proscribing marriage equality. But on the Today Show this morning, Ford said, "I'm of the opinion now that nothing is wrong with that," and compared his conversion to that of Chuck Schumer and Bill Clinton.

Mike Signorile tweets: "Wow, Harold Ford went from hating us 2 loving us! At this rate, he'd probably marry me 4 that Senate seat."

The switch seems to confirm that Ford is serious about Democratic electoral politics in New York, unless he's planning to move to one of the few states where gay people can already get married.

​The New Jersey Senate voted down gay marriage today, effectively ending any hopes for marriage equality in the Garden State until at least the end of incoming Governor Chris Christie's first term in 2014.

The defeat mirrors a similar blow-out in the New York State Senate last month. Both houses of both legislatures are controlled by Democrats, and it was a tough fight just to get a floor vote in either Senate, where the bills were both ultimately defeated.

The Jersey bill failed 20-14, with six members not voting. Similar to New York, the only yea votes were from previously committed supporters. Undeclared Senators didn't come on board.

There were some important differences between the defeats in the two states, though.

​It's a big day for gay marriage across the nation. In San Francisco, Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled that a potential legal revolution to overturn Prop 8 will not be televised live, though it will be YouTubed.

The judge will preside over the federal trial, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, in which a civil rights group, two gay couples, and the City of San Francisco are arguing that Prop 8 is a violation of their constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law. Defenders of Prop 8 are not very happy about the judge's decision, fearing that being exposed on YouTube will intimidate their witnesses. Somehow, they equate witnesses answering under oath in a court of law to Carrie Prejean answering to Perez Hilton in the Miss America Pageant . They think the proponents of "opposite marriage" will be intimidated out of speaking truth to power, for fear that they will receive the same harrowing shake down that Prejean suffered. So much for bravely standing up for their conservative principals in public, not to mention the fact that that all court witnesses and testimonies are a matter of public record, televised or not.

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As you will have guessed, Kruger denied that he is gay. Now the New York Post reports that the same two activists, Corey Johnson and Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club President Allen Roskoff, are "circulating photos" of a "cross-dressing entertainer" performing at a "birthday fundraiser" for Kruger.

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The state senate president Dick Codey's remarks are not encouraging: "We're gonna post the bill and see what happens."

If the bill fails before Chris Christie -- who has pledged to veto it -- comes in as governor on the 19th, some supporters plan to take the issue to the state supreme court.

Will these morons get gay marriage before we do?

​Marriage equality activists in New Jersey are hoping to get hundreds of protesters to rally in Trenton today, even though it is 20 degrees out and the first work day after the holidays. Regardless, their hopes for getting a marriage equality bill to Governor Corzine before he leaves office are looking increasingly dim. As of today, there are 120 bills left for the current New Jersey legislature to consider in the next two weeks, and the Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act is not scheduled to be one of them.

Once Chris Christie was elected, gay marriage supporters knew they had to pass legislation before his inauguration, or wait until at least 2014 for their next possible shot at getting a bill signed into law. Apparently, the chance to go many years without being on the record is proving irresistible to New Jersey legislators, where Democrats hold majorities in both houses, but they can't seem to get their act together to get a floor vote in either one (sound familiar?)

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Looks like gay marriage's bad year is getting better -- though Congress' 30-day review period makes it likely that the bill won't go into effect until January.