Video: New York Governor David Paterson introduces marriage equality bill

This morning New York Governor David Paterson introduced a same-sex marriage bill to the State legislature. As one of the millions of gay folks mentioned by Paterson in his address who are tired of having to pretend that they are treated equally, I applaud him.

And if you fine folks can get this bill passed in the next 30 days, you'll save me and my husband-to-be two annoying trips out-of-state to get our marriage certificate and have a Justice of the Peace of a state we don't even live in go on record that our relationship is valid. But no pressure, k?

I watched the full press conference this morning and was particularly moved by the speech from Alan Van Capelle from the Empire State Pride Agenda, whose organization actually counted the number of rights and responsibilities that are denied same-sex couples when they are not allowed to marry: it's 1,324. Considering how much of my paycheck goes to city and state taxes, that's a hell of a lot of rights and responsibilities to be paying for that I don't get to enjoy.