State Senator Roy McDonald of Saratoga County apparently has decided not to run an aggressive re-election campaign on the Independence Party line after losing a closely-contested primary for the Republican nomination.
What a shame. We need more people like Senator McDonald in Albany, and in every facet of civic life. Read More
Albert Nobbs, a lumbering saga about the pitfalls of a woman posing as a man to hold down employment as a butler in 19th-century Dublin, opened for one week in December to qualify for Oscar nominations. It is now expanding to commercial marquees for public scrutiny. Thanks to a quirky performance by Glenn Close featuring enough prosthetics, wrinkles, painfully binding corsets and pinched diction to generate critical acclaim and give Meryl Streep a run for her money, attention must be paid. But not too much. As a period piece, Albert Nobbs is slower than Proust, and nothing of any consequence ever happens to write home about. In her bowler hat and high starched collars, Glenn Close looks like Conan O’Brien playing Oscar Wilde.
Awkwardly directed by Rodrigo Garcia (son of acclaimed novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez) from a novella by George Moore that was turned into a play Ms. Close performed off-Broadway 30 years ago, it’s a dull little fugue in a minor key Read More
In the days after the same-sex marriage law was passed, a group of friends hatched a plan.
“We got really excited and said, ‘Let’s do free weddings, it’s the least we can do,’” Bex Schwartz, one of the creators of Pop-Up Chapel, told The Observer. She was still bubbling with excitement when we Read More
Long Island couple Christine Tulley and Rachel Baker traveled to downtown Manhattan at dawn on Sunday morning for reasons more sentimental than practical. Ms. Baker, a TriBeCa native, and Ms. Tulley showed up at the courthouse to be married on July 24, 2011, the first day New York State’s Marriage Equality Law went into effect. Read More
There was no shortage of heroic figures during the debate over gay marriage in New York. Governor Andrew Cuomo, advocates in the State Assembly and Republicans in the State Senate who came to see the issue as a matter of civil rights—they all received their fair share of congratulations.
One figure in the debate, however, Read More
Yesterday was a pretty hot day in the Grill Room. George and Lori Hall were here creating a big casino. Their horse, Ruler On Ice, beat 24-to-1 odds to win the Belmont Stakes last month, and they were lunching with the kings of the jockey world. The Grill Room crowd was going nuts, running over Read More
Republicans will meet later today to decide whether the State Senate will have a vote on same-sex marriage, which currently is one vote shy of the 32 votes needed to pass.
“We’re going to conference the language of the amendments,” said Republican Senate Leader Dean Skelos after meeting privately with Governor Cuomo.
Asked if he was obligated to present the vote during business hours, instead of late at night when, presumably, less public attention would be paid to the issue, Skelos demurred.
“I’m not going to work under time constraints,” he said, predicting the 32-member GOP conference would be “lengthy.”
For weeks, Cuomo has met privately with a handful of Republican Senators who wanted to see greater protections for religiously affiliated organizations who do not want to recognize or do business with gay couples. Cuomo has said he has faced “no obstacles” with Republicans.
Former President Clinton comes out in support of same-sex marriage, a sign of how far into the mainstream the LGBT agenda has become. (It was Clinton, after all, who signed things like the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states the right to refuse same-sex marriages performed in other states; and Don’t Ask Don’t Read More
Bronx Democratic Senator and leading same-sex marriage opponent Ruben Diaz, Sr is out with a release today urging the Gov. Andrew Cuomo to give up his legislative push for marriage equality and put the issue before the voters instead.
“Governor Andrew Cuomo has threatened the New York State Legislature that if we do not pass Read More
Photograph of (left to right) Mary Pratys(?), May Tobin, and Joyce Michaelian holding paper fans printed with “Rockefeller for Governor” at the GOP convention in Rochester, NY. (James Nevins Cite asCourtesy of the Westchester County Archives)
Same-Sex Marriage: Christine Quinn said at least one prior No vote Read More
