The Pragmatism of Rep. (Now Sen.) Kirsten Gillibrand on Same-Sex Marriage

by Michael Jones · 2009-01-23 03:44:00 UTC
Topics:

Gillibrand

UPDATE: Turns out newly-minted Senator Kirsten Gillibrand wasted very little time in changing tunes on the issue of marriage equality.  Last night, Sen. Gillibrand spoke to the Empire State Pride Agenda, and they're reporting today that she now supports full marriage equality.  That contradicts her statement below.  Hmm...something smells fishy.  We'll keep you posted.  Original post is below...

Finding out who New York's next Senator would be was a little like finding out who shot JR.  The answer finally came early this morning, when news leaked that Gov. David Paterson has appointed Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand to fill the vacancy left by Hillary Clinton's appointment to Secretary of State.

Who is Kirsten Gillibrand?  Well, she's no Caroline Kennedy.  In some circles that may be a good thing.  But there's one difference between Kennedy and Gillibrand that we know right out of the gate:  Kennedy supported same-sex marriage, Gillibrand supports civil unions.  Here's Gillibrand's take on marriage (courtesy of TowleRoad):

"What I’d like to do legislatively, on the federal level—and I think we’ll be able to do this with the new president—is actually make civil unions legal in all 50 states, make it the law of the land. Because what you want to fundamentally do is protect the rights and privileges of committed couples, so that they can have Medicare benefits, visit in the hospitals, have adoption rights. All [the] things that we give to married couples, committed gay couples should be eligible for. And then the question of whether you call it a marriage or not, what you label it, that can be left to the states to decide. [It’s] so culturally oriented. My mom’s generation, they want their gay friends to have every right and privilege that they should be eligible for as a married couple, but they feel uncomfortable calling it marriage. To them, a marriage is a religious word that they learned from the Catholic Church: It’s a covenant between a man, a woman, and God. So they feel uncomfortable with the word. But they don’t feel uncomfortable with the rights and privileges. I think the way you win this issue is you focus on getting the rights and privileges protected throughout the entire country, and then you do the state-by-state advocacy for having the title."

As far as we can tell, that's one of the most thought out explanations of this issue that we've seen any legislator ever provide.  But is it enough?  Or is it the next Senator from New York's take on this issue a little too pragmatic?

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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