Gay marriage bill finds support in Riverdale

SARIEL BECKENSTEIN, right, and Jerry Fishman, who have been together for 13 years, chat before heading to work on Tuesday morning. Photo by Karsten Moran

By N. Clark Judd

Diane Flood Taylor and Jane Shanky Taylor don't need the State of New York to say they're married.

"Jane and I were married in Greenwich, Conn. in December, 2008," Ms. Flood Taylor, a member of Riverdale's Congregation Tehillah, wrote in an e-mail. "Subsequent to that, we were married by a rabbi in a religious ceremony that included our family and friends."

Thanks to a directive Gov. David Paterson gave to state agencies last summer, New York already recognizes same-sex marriages performed anywhere they are legal. That directive has, so far, stood up in court.

Mr. Paterson took time away from various fiscal crises last week to announce he would put a bill before the Legislature to allow gay and lesbian couples to marry in New York.

While many gay and lesbian Riverdale/ Kingsbridge area residents are thrilled, some wonder how much this will really change.

"I just want to marry my partner of almost ten years now and give my children legal validity," said Tehillah's adminstrator, Shelli Aderman.

She lives with her partner, Narda Alcorn, a Broadway stage manager, and their children, 3-year-old Malka Aderman-Alcorn, and Noah Matan Aderman-Alcorn, 5 months, in East Harlem. They have their wedding planned.

"Our anniversary falls on June 2, so if it wasn't legal by this June we would run up to Connecticut, get hitched," Ms. Aderman said.

They're talking with the rabbi of their synagogue about a ceremony in 2010.

Sariel Beckenstein, another Riverdale resident, says he shouldn't have to leave New York to get married - although he talked about it with his life partner of 14 years, Jerry Fishman.

"The conversation came up and then another conversation came up which is, we live in the city, we live in New York City. Why do we have to go to another city to get our rights?" said Mr. Beckenstein, a performer and insurance broker who specializes in diamonds and jewelry. "Our preference is to do it in the city where we live and where we pay our taxes to."

And they have, he said: Nearly 11 years ago, he and Mr. Fishman, who runs a music school in Westchester, had a marriage ceremony in a Greenwich Village synagogue.

But religion, of course, does not universally celebrate gay marriage. And one opponent of gay marriage also holds a key vote in the narrowly Democratic state Senate.

State Sen. Ruben Diaz, Democrat of Soundview and the South Bronx, an evangelist Christian minister whose single burning issue is his disapproval for gay marriage on religious grounds, is organizing resistance to the bill.

With negotiations over this bill joining ongoing talks about the MTA in the woodpaneled conference rooms of the Capitol, there is as yet no telling whether or not it will pass. Predictably, Riverdale lawmakers Jeff Klein and Eric Schneiderman - who also represent parts of Westchester and Upper Manhattan, respectively - are both in favor of the bill.

State Sen. Pedro Espada Jr., who represents parts of Fieldston, Riverdale and Kingsbridge, has not given a clear position on gay marriage until now. In a statement released last week, he said the bill has little chance of passing - but he'd vote for it.

"I view this as a human rights issue and, therefore, I am prepared to support the Governor's bill," he said in the statement. "However, if there is insufficient support in the Senate - which appears to be the case - this bill should not come up for a vote. It would be politically imprudent and, in fact, a major step backwards, to bring this bill to a floor vote if it is headed for defeat."

And state Sen. Thomas K. Duane, who represents the Upper West Side and is the body's only openly gay member, was initially against the idea. When Mr. Paterson proposed the bill last week, Mr. Duane had changed his mind. He will be its Senate sponsor.

"I expect we'll have the majority of Democratic senators voting in favor, and we'll have several Republican senators voting in favor," Mr. Duane said Friday when reached by phone.

He said he changed his position because Mr. Paterson made the bill a priority.

For Ron Poole-Dayan, who lives in Riverdale with his partner of 15 years, Greg, and their 8-year-old twins, what Mr. Paterson has already done for domestic partners makes this largely symbolic. The fight for parity in tax benefits, insurance, pensions and other legal rights at the state level is largely over, he wrote in an e-mail - it has moved to the federal level, where he, his partner and his children do not have many rights that others do.

"Our kids take as very natural that their parents are married," Mr. Poole-Dayan wrote. "Kids may not care about immigration status, inheritance, social security, etc. But they do care about the strong symbolic statement and recognition marriage provides us as a family."

And the stakes are high.

"The moment it is on the agenda, rejection may be a real setback since it will bring the matter to public attention and then send a negative message," he said.

But the politics surrounding the right to marry someone of the same sex are irrelevant to Ms. Adelman.

"It's a bandwagon I'm happy he's jumping on," she said of the governor, "I don't care."

What she has with her partner is no different, she says, than what others have in their long-term relationships.

"We bicker over finances and toilet paper, our souls are connected," she said. "There happens to be a lack of male reproductive organs in our house and that's really the only difference. That's it."

This is part of the April 23, 2009 online edition of The Riverdale Press.

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