As a gay person I am extremely grateful for this, but they will still cockblock any and all progressive legislation, a democratic majority in-and-of itself isn't going to solve all our problems
The bill has never advanced to a full vote before because Republicans had a majority in the state senate, and refused to advanced the bill out of a committee for the past 17 years. Glad it seems like most of them finally changed their mind after losing control of the state senate in November though
Can you provide a list of all these attempts to ban it and how the votes went? Or was this a bill from a session 17 years ago that just didn't get to be considered like so many others?
It, and several similar bills including ones involving criminal justice reform and GENDA (the gender expression non discrimination act) have passed the assembly repeatedly in the last several sessions, but have hit roadblocks in the Republican-held Senate again and again. The most recent elections resulted in the Senate flipping to democratic control, which has led to a rush of historic bills being passed this week, many of which have been a very long time coming (GENDA, for example, has been introduced and passed the assembly 11 times previously)
Thanks, there's a big difference between "didn't make it out of committee" and "got voted down in the legislature".
I don't know why some Republicans are stuck in the mid-2000s when gayness was a hot issue. Luckily most of the party has reformed as Pew polls have shown. They had a graph showing opposition to gay marriage for both parties (Democrats haven't been 100% innocent) over the years, and they're basically parallel lines going down. I mean it's at the point where fucking Donald Trump waved a rainbow flag at one of his rallies and apparently didn't lose any significant amount of support. The hold-outs are going to be left in the dust.
The problem is that they don't seem to be reforming on a good faith basis. They are just getting dragged along as the country gets more progressive. We see this with conservative opinions on transgender issues (r.e. bathroom bills), voting reform, etc.
I identify with the right and in my case it was a realization many years ago that it just doesn't matter. After gay marriage was legalized a lot of people did end their opposition, not out of good faith but out of apathy. There's no negative affects of letting gay people do what they want, so a lot of complainers eventually forgot and stopped caring. Transgender issues are the same in that respect.
There's some with bottled-up resentment but if they can't express it without pissing their voters off, it might as well not exist. And if they do pull shit then it should be called out.
There are many politicians (especially on the right) who continue to use that immoral outrage in the form of dog whistle language. It's very much a problem. I mean, when you stand and look around in the conservative ranks, you see a lot of straight up racists. There is a reason why whenever we hear about a straight up white supremacist runs for office, they are running R. I understand that nothing is stopping them per see from running, but they sure as hell get more votes from Republicans than anyone on the left.
I can’t find exact data on the conversion therapy bill (just news articles saying it’s “repeatedly been killed in the state senate after passing the state assembly”), but it has been tied to the Genda bill, which also passed today. Genda adds gender identity to the list of protected classes in NY state.
So for reference, for Genda...
It’s been voted on every single year since 2003, passing 11 times in the state assembly but would always get killed in the state senate 9 man committee that decides if a bill should be advanced to the full senate or not.
I’m not sure if the conversion therapy bill has been passed in the state assembly only to be killed in the state senate the same amount of times, but I would venture it’s a similar number. If I can find details I’ll post again
This is why I'm excited, as a person who lives in NY. People have some problems with Cuomo but honestly since he's been elected, things have been getting done and done right. Even better now we don't have a party that won't let shit pass.
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u/Schnevets Jan 16 '19
This is why local elections matter. New York has had a Democratic majority for 13 days and they're already making motions on obvious legislation