At Branded Saloon, Cheers and Champagne as Gay Marriage Bill Passes

In the back room of Prospect Heights’ , Jayson Berkshire ordered Champaign for the entire bar when the same sex marriage bill was passed tonight.

“It was worth it,” he said, to mark the occasion. “I basically feel I’m grateful to be acknowledged as all the other tax paying citizens are,” he said. “My civil rights are being acknowledged.”

Just about everyone at the bar found out at the same time. “Everyone got an alert on their cell phones," said Gerard Kouwenhoven, Branded’s owner. “Everyone applauded and hugged, there was hooting and hollering."

After a 33-29 vote in the New York State Senate, New York joins the ranks of five other states and the District of Columbia in recognizing same-sex unions. It is the largest state to do so, and the first Republican-controlled legislature to pass a vote extending marriage rights to LGBT couples.

Alex Savoie, the bar’s co-owner, said she and her wife drove to Connecticut to get married last year, but now that the bill has passed, they planned to get remarried in New York.

Sarah Vega, a teacher who also works at the bar said she was “ecstatic.”

Vega and her wife got married in California before Proposition 8 passed, but when her wife had a child she had to legally adopt the baby, as though she were “a stranger,” in order to protect her parental rights.

Phil Alexander, an administrator for a non-profit arts organization, said the bill would make a big difference for such issues.

“As much as this is a symbolic measure, it’s also an important protection for individuals,” he said.

Alexander and his former boyfriend of 15 years formed a “domestic partnership,” in 1993, but it wasn’t the same as being married

“We didn’t know what to call the ceremony. We didn’t know what to call the relationship, we didn’t know what to call each other. From the beginning to the end we were in this netherworld.” he said.

It’s been a long road for both sides of the gay marriage debate in New York State.

The mayor of New Paltz, Jason West, was the first New York public official to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2004. However, subsequent challenges by gay marriage opponents resulted in the courts striking down those unions as unconstitutional in 2006.

Shortly after, the State Legislature went to work.

A bill legalizing same-sex unions was first introduced in the Assembly in 2007 and later passed the Democratic-controlled chamber multiple times since.

However, the politics of gay marriage has been a much more complex affair in the state Senate — one that often transcended party lines.

Eight senate Democrats joined Republicans to vote down the measure in 2009. Of those Dems, six hailed from the five boroughs, led by state Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr., D-Bronx, a Pentecostal minister who opposes same-sex unions on religious grounds. 

In the last days before the bill’s passage, it was concerns raised by religious leaders such as Diaz Sr. that dominated negotiations between Gov. Andrew Cuomo and wavering Senate Republicans.

The passage of New York's legislation was made possible by two Republican senators who had been undecided.

Sen. Stephen Saland voted against a similar bill in 2009.

"While I understand that my vote will disappoint many, I also know my vote is a vote of conscience," Saland said in a statement to The Associated Press before Friday's vote. "I am doing the right thing in voting to support marriage equality."

Gay couples in gallery wept during Saland's speech.

Sen. Mark Grisanti, a GOP freshman from Buffalo, also said he would vote for the bill. Grisanti said he could not deny anyone what he called basic rights.

After the bill passed, celebrations erupted throughout the state including in front of the iconic Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street.

The next morning Prospect Heights Councilwoman Letitia James waxed poetic, saying via e-mail, "We witnessed history, a human rights struggle that was finally realized yesterday in the dark of night; and so, today we rise, with the moral arc of justice on our side, as we take in the full breath and depth of knowing, in the dawn of this new day, that the full weight, faith and credit of NYS now recognizes and upholds marriage equality for all."

Rachael Stern, a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn Community Pride Center who lives in Prospect Heights, said after working on the issue for 10 years, she was “beyond thrilled,” to see it pass.

“I think watching our elected officials really grapple with the issue themselves and come out on the right side has been rewarding and unbelievably powerful for us as a community – they represented us,” she said, choking up a bit. “Often we don’t feel like the do, and they did."

Fort Greene Patch editor Paul Leonard contributed to this article.