How are gay marriage and adoptee rights connected?

Daniel O'Donnell

Today in the New York Times one can read about the marriage of Daniel O'Donnell and John Banta, who, under New York's newly passed legislation allowing gays to marry, tied the knot on January 19.

O'Donnell, Rosie O'Donnell's brother, is described as a Democrat "whose impassioned pleas in the Assembly chambers and Albany's private corridors were considered instrumental in humanizing the push to legalize same-sex marriage, as New York Lawmakers did last June."Later one reads: "Mr. O'Donnell's speeches on same-sex marriage were both comic and profound. 'I don't want a seat in your synagogue. I don't want a church pew,' one of them went. 'I want a license that all of your have....'"

Gays have political clout; bastards don’t. Lessons from New Jersey and New York.

Jane

Last week New Jersey’s Governor, Chris Christie, sank a bill which would have allowed adoptees to access to their original birth certificates. The New York legislature tabled a similar bill after New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent a lobbyist to Albany to oppose it. Meanwhile the New York legislature passed a bill to allow single sex couples to marry, a measure which would have been unheard of a few years ago.