"Less than a week after New York's highest court ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry did not violate the State Constitution, a lower court on Long Island denied health benefits yesterday to the partner of a Uniondale man.
In his ruling, a State Supreme Court justice in Mineola said that even though they had wed two years ago in Canada, the men's marriage was not recognized by the state. The decision was the first by a New York Court to refer directly to last week's watershed decision by the New York Court of Appeals. The appellate court, by a 4-to-2 majority, found that in laws dating back nearly 100 years, the State Legislature had intended to limit marriage to a union between a man and a woman, and that lawmakers had a rational basis for doing so."
(Source: Alan Feuer, "No Shared Benefits for 2 Men Wed in Canada, Judge Rules," The New York Times, July 13, 2006)
Hat tip to the World Congress of Families.
