The Sun reports [1] that marriage equality is making gains in Albany - but the Senate remains a roadblock.

According to the article, Gov. Spitzer seems to be ready to make a push for legalization of gay marriage after the budget fight is over, and it's looking increasingly likely that the Assembly will go along:

The Empire State Pride Agenda, a leading gay advocacy group in New York, says 54 members of the 150-person Assembly have expressed support for a gay marriage bill, up from 35 when it polled the chamber in September.

"We think it has a real shot of passing in the Assembly this year," the executive director of the Empire State Pride Agenda, Alan Van Capelle, told The New York Sun.

One of those 54 Assembly members is Richard Brodsky, a Democrat who represents a district in Westchester. Mr. Brodsky said he senses that support for a bill is growing in his conference. "I think the prejudice is diminishing. People are thinking about it in reasonable terms," he said.

Brodsky's in the weeds on Albany reform [2], but he's got the right idea civil rights, it seems.

However, not only would a marriage equality bill die in Joe Bruno's Senate, it might not fare much better in a Democratic Senate, either.

(More below the fold...)

According to The Sun:

One Democratic opponent of gay marriage, Ruben Diaz, said he estimated that 10 members of his conference would reject a gay marriage bill. Other lawmakers interviewed said the number of opponents was much smaller, perhaps as low two or three.

The Senate minority leader, Malcolm Smith, one of the more conservative members of his conference, said last fall he would be in favor of gay marriage legislation, but has said his conference has yet to agree on a position.

This raises an interesting - and bleakly ironic - question. Senator Smith has indicated that, were he majority leader, the Senate would be run as something more resembling a democracy - which, one would hope, would include letting bills out of committee for open debate. Would the first piece of legislation to be voted down on the Senate floor in God knows how long be a bill for marriage equality?

That's no argument against reform, by the way. I have no doubt that, under a continuation of the strong-leader system, if Smith felt that gay marriage would be a problem for his caucus, he'd simply never allow it out of committee.

The problem is how we convince anachronisms like Sen. Diaz to see the light.

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