Hope everyone had a good fourth; if you don't know already, heres the
bad news, from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, 3 July 1993.
By Kyle Hughes, Albany bureau:

		[NYS] Senate GOP halts gay rights bill 	

	Albany- Senate Republicans rejected a statewide gay-rights bill last 
night, with Majority Leader Ralph Marino, R-Oyster Bay, declaring that it was 
difficult to stop discrimination against homosexuals by passing a law. "I'm 
opposed to discrimination but I'm not sure you can legislate against it",
Marino said, after GOP senators decided in a closed-door meeting not to let 
the bill be voted on by the full senate. Lawmakers also reported no success
n negotiations for funding sports stadiums in Rochester, Batavia, Geneva 
and other cities. [?] The gay-rights bill, which passed the Democrat-controlled
Assembly and was likely to pass the Senate with Democratic support, would have
extended the existing state Human Rights Law to include specifically gays and
lesbians. The law bans discrimination in housing, jobs, credit or public 
accommodations. New York City, Albany and a number of other communities in the
state have similar gay-rights laws with 60 percent of the state's gay and
 lesbian population covered by such protective legislation. But the state bill
took on a symbolic importance to many, with conservatives saying it would 
encourage and bring about the breakdown of the American family. Sen. Roy 
Goodman, R-Manhattan, who sponsored the measure, said opposition memos filed
by the Conservative Party "significantly mischaracterized the bill ."
Supporters had released polls showing a majority of respondents held no __ 
objections to providing civil rights protections for gays and lesbians. \/



Matt Guptill
mgup@isis.pas.rochester.edu