Subscribe to Breaking NewsLowenstein: NY Assembly vote leads to raucus debate
As James wrote about earlier, the New York Assembly voted in favor of gay marriage yesterday. By a vote of 89-52, the Assembly stood up for marriage equality for same-sex couples in the Empire State.
The interesting part of the story wasn’t that the bill passed. It was expected to pass the Assembly easier, and the real battle is imminent in the state Senate.
The interesting part of the story was the shape the debate took in the Assembly.
JoeMyGod has an interesting run down of what was said by members of the Assembly, but I found two of the comments particularly interesting.
UPDATE IV: Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-BK) is a vile creature. He just diminished anti-gay discrimination, saying that the Holocaust was REAL discrimination. Hikind represents Boro Park, one the largest Orthodox Jewish communities in the world outside of Israel.
UPDATE V: Assemblyman Benjamin (who is black) seems to object to comparing gay rights to civil rights. Benjamin: “Mr. O’Donnell, was it homosexuals or Africans who were brought to this country in slave ships?” O’Donnell: “I’m sure BOTH as I’m sure some of those Africans were homosexual.” Benjamin: “Touche’.” O’Donnell’s response prompted the chair to order the gallery to stop laughing.
Both comments suggest degrees of oppression– even a hierarchy of suffering– which seems to be besides the point. If injustice and inequality are the absence of justice and equality, can there be degrees of either?
Any debate which attempts to compare or rank experiences of suffering is a distraction from the goal of ending suffering. Thankfully, the New York Assembly didn’t get distracted for long.
Does not Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D-BK)know that gays were also rounded up and executed in the Holocaust? Maybe he needs a history lesson. Ever heard of why we have a pink triangle as one of our LKGBT symbols?
I have grown weary of debating over how human we are.
Even Nancy Pelosi has turned her back on us, as well as Obama.
So what are we to do next?
Jenna’s article offers such a clear and succinct analysis on the oppression of injustice that stabs at the core of the subject. How can any group who has not fully realized equal justice and protection under the law impugn another without cutting their own throat?
I don’t see Obama doing anything for us yet, what about “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” after 100 day’s not a thing for us
So it comes out. Hikind is busily demonstrating that anothe group of religious zealots is busy manipulating the system, constantly crying oppression, and holding hostage a larger population for their own bigoted goals. Hikind isn’t some redneck Baptist, but the intolerance is the same. He proves that yes, you can be a minority and still be utterly contemptuous of ANYONE else. It’s this element within Jewish America who’ve decided that they’ll clear Palestinians out of the West Bank because “g-d says it’s ours.” You do it to me, it’s wrong, I do it to you, it’s g-d’s will. I see.
Assemblyman Benjamin made a fool of himself, and his comments showed his real truth: if you’re black, then Benjamin would have it believed that you can’t be gay, or that gay is something not found in the oppressed African slave. Aside from the laughable idiocy of the claim (which is made with some regularity across Africa), it’s that same effort to use past wrongs to extort benefit in the present. The benefit that both Hikind and Benjamin seek is to make sur somebody else is there being actively stripped of their rights.
Gays don’t play this game. Good on the Asembly for seeing past this crap. Wrong isn’t a competition, and if you make it that, you’re not doing a damn thing to help yourself no matter where you are in life.
Now on to the Senate. The cave-dwelling GOP won’t be as much entertainment as the Dems who think the party line gives them room to be bigots. Will the state Dems demand a party-line vote? If they don’t, what consequences fall on the state party?
Not only were homosexuals sent to the concentration camps, but they were kept in them even after the camps were liberated! As homosexuals were universally treated like automatic criminals.
To Dov whatever the f… his name is.
It is so interesting how the conservative people living in the dark ages of history, be they Jewish, Christian, Catholic, etc., continue to denigrate the humanity of gay people.
But you could do worse. You could join with the couple of Haridim members of the Knesset who said “gays were like bird flu” last fall. Of course this was nothing but a call or hope for the genocide of the very group of people whose ashes shared hitlers smokestacks with your family’s earlier generations.
So, my wife happens to be going to Israel soon for a visit, yes we are Jewish. But to go to an Israel that lets creeps like you have any power in their government – no way. Instead I thank you for insuring that the $4000 it would have cost for me to go with her is instead going to gay political causes.
I’m glad that Israel does recognize gay marriages done elsewhere, and perhaps Canada or some other gay marriage country will perform gay marriages at their embassies, which at least under our laws, are considered the territories of the embassies countries.
I won’t quite advocate the equivalent of what you advocate – that Allah may visit your sick head. And you have convinced me to join the Unitarian Universalist church to which my daughter belongs, and be glad my son is an atheist.
“Any debate which attempts to compare or rank experiences of suffering is a distraction from the goal of ending suffering.”
I agree that the bigger picture, and issue, is and should be that the elimination needless suffering due to inequality of human rights should be what we are are working towards. Reality also seems to require that certain groups, on occasion, need to be reminded they have not been the only ones to have suffered, therefore they should be reluctant to practice intolerance themselves. Sad but true.
To clarify my previous post. It is not my intent to point fingers at any group or community, but rather to remind us that those who forget the lessons of history, especially the history of their own community, are doomed to repeat the mistakes of their past.
Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963
and my paraphrasing of MLK
Injustice to anyone is a threat to justice for everyone.
May 15, 2009
Douglas, most orthodox and conservative Jews think as Hikind does. They believe we choose our orientation and as such it was our own fault ending up in the gas chambers. 15,000 to them is a drop in the ocean and doesn’t count. We are less than they are based on their bigotry and obsession with Leviticus to justify it while ignoring other verses that would put them in a very uncomfortable situation, how convenient. I daresay they would treat their fellow Gay Jewish brothers and sisters the same way who also died in the holocaust.