Manhattan Diary

Church lost on gay marriage because they’re wrong

The problem with gay rights is there is no way to seek them - and there’s certainly no way to deny them - without getting personal.

You’re not talking about abstract but important things like zoning laws or tort reform, you’re talking about something profound and deeply private – you’re talking about your own heart, you’re talking about you.

There are forces out there that believe my 14 year relationship with my partner is massively destabilizing to the United States, to the point that America will soon resemble totalitarian states like North Korea.

Michele Bachmann and the killer clown comparison

If you're announcing your run for the presidency, you probably hope by evening you're not being compared with a notorious serial killer.

But that's exactly what happened to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann when she got her John Waynes seriously mixed up yesterday.

Mistakenly comparing herself to a notorious serial killer instead of a laconic Hollywood legend, she told a Fox News reporter:

Marriage Equality is a victory for us all

Last night, moments after the New York State Legislature and Governor Cuomo delivered marriage equality, my Facebook and Twitter feeds exploded.

Stoic friends, not given to public outbursts, admitted they were weeping. Outside of my window the Empire State Building was suddenly rainbow colored in celebration. It's been a long time since I've seen such widespread outpourings of sheer joy in New York City.

A series of tweets from Speaker Christine Quinn - named by The New York Observer this week as the number one most powerful gay person in New York City - made my night:

Why uninspiring 2012 GOP candidates can't win

A new Bloomberg poll released yesterday confirms what most of us already know: only 28 percent of Americans are 'mostly happy' with the current field of GOP challengers.

That leaves a whopping 58 percent hoping another, better, as yet unannounced, candidate will throw their hat in the ring.

But that does not mean Sarah Palin.

The hypocrisy of New York's state senators on gay marriage

This illuminating exchange between Ruben Diaz, the most anti-gay Democratic senator in New York and journalist Steven Thrasher at the Village Voice has just been published:

All right, let me ask you about this. You believe marriage is between one man and one woman, yes?

Yes [laughing] So? Why are you asking me this? You know that, you know what I believe. Why are you calling me? Marriage is between a man and a woman.

Anti-gay extremists in Albany for vote today

Take a look at this picture. These are the people fighting to 'protect' marriage in Albany this morning.

Form left to right it's a rogues gallery of anti-gay extremists. The man cut off on the left side is Rabbi Yehuda Levin, the Orthodox political player on record for calling gays 'moral terrorists' and for blaming them for the Haitian earthquake and even 9/11.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan and the Zombie Apocalypse

The GOP's offices in Albany must have seemed like an outpost of the Vatican this week.

First Archbishop Timothy Dolan sent GOP Majority Leader Dean Skelos a widely reported warning salvo - calling in to an Albany radio show to claim that the marriage equality bill currently under consideration by the Senate could infringe on religious freedom.

Then, to underline his alarm, Dolan sent Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn to visit Skelos' in his office on Friday morning.

Ex-gay therapy works! Can I marry your daughter!

Why are you looking at me like that? It's a perfectly normal request. I'm in love with your daughter. I would like your blessing to marry her.

She's such a nice girl, Eunice.

The first thing I really noticed about her was her perfume. The day we met she swept past me in a majestic cloud of Miss Dior Chérie. I mean to say, I would know that fragrance anywhere. It's an audacious little chypre with a citrusy freshness and a jasmine heart sprinkled with fruity notes. So chic, so classic.

Churches that play politics should pay taxes

I have written in recent weeks about the anti-gay marriage amendment that Minnesota's state GOP placed on their 2012 ballot.

Critics have seen it as a particularly blatant attempt to write Minnesota off President Obama's 2012 win column by offering a tempting carrot to draw out the evangelical vote - at the expense of an apparently disposable minority.

Remember that same-sex marriage is already prohibited in Minnesota by statute. So the truth is there's just no way to talk about this unnecessary amendment other than to call it what it is: a political ploy wrapped inside an anti-gay attack.

Seniors are not safe over the GOP's Medicare plan

Take heart seniors, there's one group of people who definitely won't be affected if Republican leaders eventually succeed in raising the cost of prescription drugs and long term care by gutting Medicare: our Republican leaders themselves.

They'll still have their top-notch Congressional health care plans, which by the way we pay for. They will also continue to do astoundingly well by the corporate health care lobbyists who are salivating at the prospect of raising prescription costs once again.

The same GOP who decade after decade warn us about the evils of socialism enjoy a level of subsidized health care that would have been the envy of the top tier of the Kremlin.

What's really caused our national debt?

Governor Christie takes state helicopter to son's ballgame

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who has campaigned as a fiscally responsible conservative Republican, is in the headlines this morning for taking a state helicopter to his son's baseball game at an upscale prep school.

Christie, who had a private meeting at the governors mansion on Monday night with Iowa donors trying to persuade him to run for president, arrived at Delbarton prep around 4pm on Tuesday where he was driven from the helicopter about 100 yards to the stands in a black limo with tinted windows.

The governor had no public events on his schedule, so it is unclear why he chose to fly to the game in the $12.5 million dollar helicopter.