Agudas Israel's Shmuel Lefkowitz said 2 weeks before NEW YORK's same gender "marriage" bill passed that he wasn't fighting it because he didn't think it was going to pass!
At this point any person with an once of intelligence knew that this bill had a very good chance of passing.
Shmuel Lefkowitz on the "marriage" bill that passed 2 weeks later
If I believed the votes were there, I’d put more
effort into it,” he says. “I believe this is under control
This year, LGBT advocates in New York had
ample cause to be hopeful. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, brimming with political
capital, declared same-sex "marriage"
a top priority for his
administration and Agudah supported Coumo by portraying Carl Paladino as an anti semite and appeared far more adept at the art of legislative
wrangling than his troubled predecessor, David Paterson. A cohort of
deep-pocketed Republican donors and advocates, led by George W. Bush’s
recently-out-of-the-closet campaign manager Ken Mehlman, seemed poised
to shake up the traditional partisan breakdown by winning over some
moderate GOP legislators. Polling data has consistently shown that a
majority of New Yorkers, and now even a majority of Americans, favor
marriage equality.
And indeed,
rumors
leaking into the press today suggest victory may be within reach,
though advocates won’t rest until the votes are in. Conservative
religious groups, meanwhile, who’ve spent months imploring lawmakers not
to capitulate in the face of mounting public pressure, are cautiously
confident that
their efforts have been successful.
Taking the Gospel to the Legislature
Rev. Jason McGuire, the executive director of
New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms,
who oversees a loosely organized interfaith effort to oppose same-sex
marriage, dismisses the notion that there has been any consequential
movement among Republicans as “a puff piece for the media.”
“In my conversations with senators,” he said, “I’m just not getting
the impression that it has been that big of a factor. If Republicans
want to retain the majority and be back here in Albany, they have to
remember their base.”
McGuire, a fixture of the state capitol building, routinely holds
prayer breakfasts, Bible studies, and other outreach events for
lawmakers. “I use lobbying as a platform to take the gospel to the
legislature,” he told me. McGuire views the united front put on by Gov.
Cuomo, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and other New York political figures as
little more than the product of a cold political calculus. “I don’t
think he’s as truly committed to the issue as perhaps he’s portrayed,”
McGuire says of Cuomo. “The bottom line is, he came from a very
difficult budget session and acted like a conservative in many ways—that
did not please his base. So the only thing he sees right now that he
can do to win back his liberal-left base is same-sex "marriage".”
The strategy for McGuire at this late hour is to simply “run out the
clock”—emphasize that other items on the governor’s agenda, like an
ethics overhaul and property tax relief, are more important to New
Yorkers than same-sex marriage. But some of his allies are taking a more
confrontational stance. Sen. Reuben Diaz, a Pentecostal minister and
the legislature’s most brazenly vocal opponent of
so called "marriage" equality,
held a provocative rally on May 15 in the Bronx, where he was joined by
National Organization for Marriage’s Brian Brown.
The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has purchased at least a
half million dollars worth of television ads (one of which has been
declared
false by the non-partisan organization Politifact) and pledges to spend
$1.5 million to defeat legislators who vote for the bill. Dennis Poust,
a lobbyist with the New York Catholic Conference, says the Archdiocese
of New York has no formal relationship with the NOM. (In Maine, the
initiative campaign that resulted in repeal of marriage equality
legislation was led by the Church and funded primarily by NOM and
Catholic organizations.) Despite being led by Catholics, Poust said, NOM
operates largely independently of the Church. “We’ve spoken to them;
filled them in on the situation when it began to heat up,” he said.
“They’ve gotten involved on their own.”
In contrast with NOM’s public displays of fervor, the Catholic
Conference relies more on its personnel’s individual relationships with
legislators as a means of advocacy. No emotional rallies, no massive
advertising buys, and no protracted fundraising pushes for specific
political initiatives. “We can’t compete with the other side
financially,” Poust said. “And we don’t try to.”
But New York’s high-profile Archbishop, US Conference of Catholic
Bishops President Timothy Dolan, has been unafraid to publicly associate
with NOM. Heading into this final week, Dolan and Diaz were scheduled
to record an interview with NOM’s Maggie Gallagher for broadcast on
satellite radio. Diaz told me Dolan’s impassioned involvement this year
was evidence that organized religious opposition has not wavered since
2009, when a same-sex "marriage" bill failed by an unexpectedly large
margin. “He issued a statement that is very, very powerful,” Diaz said.
“Two years ago they didn’t do that.”
“To uphold that traditional definition, to strengthen it, and to
defend it is not a posture of bigotry or bullying,” Archbishop Dolan
wrote in
a May 19 blog post.
“Nor is it a denial of the ‘right’ of anybody. To tamper with that
definition, or to engage in some Orwellian social engineering about the
nature and purpose of marriage, is perilous to all of us.”
Dov Hikind is Insulted
Factions of New York’s Orthodox Jewry have also been monitoring the
legislative jostling closely. On May 23, six organizations issued a
joint position statement exhorting lawmakers to uphold traditional
marriage. Among the signatories was Agudath Israel of America, an
umbrella organization for ultra-Orthodox groups, both Hasidic and
non-Hasidic, who share a “singular belief in the Torah as the primary
source of their religious values,” according to Rabbi Shmuel Lefkowitz,
its chief officer for governmental affairs.
“On the issue of legalizing same-sex marriage,”
the statement reads,
“the Orthodox Jewish world speaks with one voice, loud and clear: We
oppose yet not enough, not to vote for those who caused it to pass the redefinition of the bedrock relationship of the human family.
The Torah, which forbids homosexual activity, sanctions only the union
of a man and a woman in matrimony.”
Lefkowitz believes that same-sex marriage lacks the requisite
momentum for passage. “
If I believed the votes were there, I’d put more
effort into it,” he says. “I believe this is under control.”
Religious opponents routinely reference the shocking level of vitriol
they say they’ve encountered for their piety; for remaining observant
of what they see as
thousands-year-old beliefs. Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn assemblyman who represents one of the largest communities of Orthodox Jews outside of Israel, told me,
“I think more than ever before—and if we vote on it in the assembly,
this is what I’m going to speak about—I sort of resent the fact that if
you’re for human rights, civil rights, morality, then you gotta be for
gay "marriage". You know, that’s insulting to me. And it should be to a
lot of New Yorkers.”
“They’re throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, in order to
get people to vote for this,” Hikind said. “Lady Gaga thinks I should
vote for gay "marriage"? It’s like the world turned upside down.”
(
religiondispatches)highlights are my additions
A few days later Lefkowitz told one of the few Orthodox Jews who was in Albany actually trying to fight the bill that he wasn't fighting it strongly because it was going to pass. He also refused to ally Agudah up with those people in the Orthodox Jewish community who were in lobbying and I'm not referring to Rabi Levin senators in Albany and warning people weeks before this interview, that bill was in great danger of passing and that we needed to lobby our legislators with great strength.
His reason was he was afraid they would mess things up, so how did aguda try and lobby Albany they met with Andrew Coumo to officially try and convince him not to pass the bill that he promised to pass.
The next primary/general election after the "marriage" bill passed Agudah (board members) supported the same legislators who voted to pass the bill they were supposedly against.
