The Empire State Pride Agenda recognizes that while significant cultural, legal and governmental advances have led to greater equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) New Yorkers, we remain highly vulnerable without the vast majority of rights and protections that most New Yorkers take for granted.  Nowhere is this truer than in the treatment of our families.

While most New Yorkers utilize marriage as the primary legal device by which government supports families, the families and children of LGBT New Yorkers are denied access to literally 2,462 rights and responsibilities that the state and federal governments automatically bestow on married couples.  So far only one state – Massachusetts – has extended marriage to same-sex couples.  Several other states have used civil unions, domestic partnerships or other statewide mechanisms to support same-sex couples and their families.  However, even those institutions create a second-class status by denying loving same-sex couples the choice of entering into marriage.

Among the fifty states, New York is neither the best nor the worst in protecting LGBT families.   It is one of only five states in the nation without a discriminatory law or constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.  New York has also protected same-sex couples in some significant ways, including hospital visitation rights and legal authority to control a loved ones bodily remains. 

New York’s LGBT families, however, still are denied access to such fundamental protections as medical decision-making authority, inheritance rights, the ability to adopt children as a couple, eligibility for governmental relief programs such as workers compensation death benefits, immunity from having to testify against a spouse in court, access to Family Court for orders of protection from domestic violence and divorce. 

Every one of our bordering neighbors, with the exception of Pennsylvania, offers some sort of comprehensive statewide mechanism for protecting LGBT families: civil unions in New Jersey, Vermont and Connecticut, and marriage in Massachusetts and Canada.  

The Pride Agenda continues to work for protections for LGBT families.  In addition to the number of LGBT family bills pending in the New York State Legislature that provide a specific right or protection, we continue to insist on more comprehensive measures that will allow us to care for our families.  This especially means that marriage should be made available as a choice to loving same-sex couples who so desperately need access to the literally life-and-death protections it affords. 

The families of LGBT people – the care-giving units we form to support each other and nurture our children – deserve the support of government and society. To end the discriminatory treatment of our families, we must:

• Support same-sex couples having the same freedom to marry and rights and responsibilities enjoyed by other couples and oppose all attempts, including constitutional amendments and so-called “Defense of Marriage Acts,” to limit access to marriages by same-sex couples.

• Secure comprehensive measures that end discrimination against LGBT families in such areas as taxation, insurance, medical decision-making, access to Family Court, bereavement and family leave equity and inheritance.

• Support efforts to secure equal parenting rights for LGBT people including equal access to safe and affordable reproductive technologies, adoptions and foster care opportunities.

• Require that public and private entities, including employers, businesses and government agencies, honor and respect the legal marriages, civil unions and domestic partnerships of same-sex couples performed in other states and countries.
• Work to prevent state and local governments from using public funds to do business with companies that fail to extend to the domestic partners of their employees benefits equal to those extended to spouses.