gay marriage icon Edie Windsor.
By Dan Murphy
City Council Majority Leader Michael Sabatino and husband Robert Voorheis, will hold a book reading and book signing for their contributions to the book “The People’s Victory-Stories from the Front Lines in the Fight for Marriage Equality’.on April 14th at the Yonkers Riverfront Library from 3pm-430pm.
Sabatino and Voorheis revisit their historic journey for marriage equality in New York State in their four chapters in the book, writing about their friend and marriage equality icon Edie Windsor, their legal case before the NY Court of Appeals, and their participation in Albany, waiting to see if the vote on Marriage Equality would happen in 2011.
Some of the interesting parts of their history are retold in their portion of the book include:
Their first meeting, and interactions with Edie Windsor, the plaintiff in the landmark 2013 civil rights case in which the Supreme Court held that restricting U.S. federal interpretation of “marriage” and “spouse” can apply only to opposite-sex unions was unconstitutional. Titled, ‘The Attractive Blonde Lady,’ Sabatino and Voorheis write about their first meeting with Edie years before Marriage Equality passed in New York or anywhere in the country. The chapter also gives the reader insight into the many years of work that both Sabatino and Voorheis put into Marriage Equality, long before Marriage Equality passed in New York State, and before Sabatino was elected to the Yonkers City Council.
Sabatino and Voorheis were also the first same sex marriage recognized in New York State, even though they were married in Niagra Falls Canada in 2003 (Canada recognized same sex marriage before the US). The chapter ‘The First Marriage Recognition in New York State’ recaps how former County Executive Andy Spano’s recognition of Sabatino and Voorheis’ marriage led to a court case that made it up all the way to the NYS Court of Appeals.
I enjoyed the chapter ‘Waiting in the Gallery’ because it recaps the efforts to pass same sex marriage in New York State, which ended in its passage in 2011. “As the week went on, more and more people arrived from both sides of the issue and lined the halls and stairways shouting their slogans. The opposition bused people in from as far away as Texas. At one point the religious right started singing hymns in the hallways so the two of us, having sung in church choirs for decades, joined in with them. Some of the reactions we got were priceless. I think they thought all of us gays were heathens. What would we know about religious hymns?” writes Sabatino and Voorheis in the book.
This chapter also reviews how some democratic state senators changed their votes, from No in 2009 to yes in 2011. The journey that these senators took to vote yes on Marriage Equality echoes many of the journey’s that many of us took to rethink and reconsider this issue when Marriage Equality became law in the state of New York and took effect on July 24, 2011.
To learn more, and to purchase the book, meet the two at the Riverfront Library April 14 from 3-430pm.
