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the case, but Grisanti’s opponents won’t.
What it comes down to is that the Conservatives need
to prove they can still flex their political muscles. I got a
candid lesson in realpolitik from Jason J. McGuire, the
acting Livingston County chairman: “You think we’re
going to talk marriage, marriage, marriage all of the
time? No. In any campaign you find the weakness, and
you exploit that. These people betrayed their base.”
Like New York’s Conservatives, the national lobbies
for and against marriage equality see the fate of these
four New York Republicans as bearing heavily on their
future influence in states where marriage is still
undecided. If marriage supporters can’t protect their
friends, if opponents can’t mete out punishment to the
defectors, who will pay attention to them next time?
“The price is going to be paid by turncoats like Grisanti
and the rest,” declared Brian Brown, president of the
National Organization for Marriage, who claims to have
$2 million earmarked for the defeat of the New York
Four.
So far, the most significant N.O.M. reprisals in New
York have been billboards briefly erected in the four
districts, with a menacing but oddly nonspecific
message addressed to each senator: “You’re Next.”
When I asked Conservative politicians in New York
what part the national lobby would play, most tended
to agree with Thomas D. Cook, chairman of the
Monroe County party organization: “I think they’re full
of smoke.”
The Sunday morning after my breakfast at Daisies, I
drove an hour past rolling dairy pastures to Rochester
to attend church with Senator Alesi, the only one of the
four who state Republican leaders believe is in real
peril. A few days earlier, the Conservative Party
announced that Alesi ranked lowest of all Senate
Republicans (52 percent) on its key­-vote scorecard;
the Monroe County chairman declared that Alesi would
not get the Conservative line this year. The county
Republican chairman was meeting with local party
leaders to discuss backing someone else.
Bill Keller is a former executive editor of The Times. He
writes a column for the Op­-Ed page.
EDITOR: Greg Veis
Alesi is enjoying the financial largess that has accrued
to other gay­-marriage supporters, but he has not been
helped by redistricting. And where Grisanti is seen by
party leaders as an up­-and­-comer, Alesi is considered
unpredictable — as one prominent Republican put it,
“a character.”When I met with the senator, his mood
verged on fatalism. The club his enemies would use to
pummel him, he surmised, would not be gay marriage
but a loopy episode known in his district as “the
lawsuit.” Back in 2008, Alesi was exploring houses for
The New York Times/ ­- Politics, Sáb, 14 de Abril de 2012
CLIPPING INTERNACIONAL (Supreme Court)
sale in a new development called Trolley Brook
Estates. Finding one house locked, he went in the
basement door. The house was still under
construction, so he climbed up a ladder being used as
a makeshift stairway, fell and injured his leg. It turned
out this house had already been sold, but the owners
agreed not to press trespassing charges. Then last
year, a day before the statute of limitations was set to
expire, Alesi sued the homeowners, a retired couple,
for his injuries. A few days later, realizing that this was
a boneheaded bit of public relations, he dropped the
suit and apologized. I don’t think I encountered a voter
in Rochester who hadn’t followed the story.
Anyone who was surprised by Alesi’s vote for gay
marriage has never been to services at Spiritus Christi
Church, where Alesi has been a parishioner for a
half­-dozen years. The 9:30 Mass was offered at a
former Presbyterian sanctuary, and the 850 seats were
filled with a cheerful mix of multigenerational families
and gay couples. The Mass featured a choir that could
hold its own in a gospel sing­-off (the associate pastor
calls it “our mostly white black choir”) and a homily that
turned Noah’s tale into a parable of inclusiveness and
second chances. Alesi seemed to take real joy and
comfort from the service, at one point leaning over to
tell me: “This is a safe place. It feels so different from
the world I work in.”
Spiritus Christi bills itself as “a Catholic church, not a
Roman Catholic church.” It was expelled by the
Vatican for, among other deviations, favoring the
ordination of women and an inclusive view of gay
people. The clergy members began performing gay
marriages long before the Legislature gave them legal
status. Alesi has become something of a hero to the
congregation.
“When he voted against it the first time,” Jim Callan,
the associate pastor, told me, “they grouped against
him at the church.” Last year when he voted in favor,
the Rev. Mary Ramerman announced it during Mass,
and he got a standing ovation.
After Mass I drove around Alesi’s district and was
struck by two things: first, most people I spoke to knew
the name of their state senator, which — trust me — is
nowhere close to normal. And second, the prevailing
popular view was admiration and shared pride that a
politician had not followed the path of least resistance.
I found people who disagreed with his vote, and a few
who said they might hold it against him in November.
But there was none of the vehemence I heard around
the pols’ table at Daisies.
Many gays still experience America as intolerant, even
menacing. But if the experience of New York’s
Republican dissenters teaches us anything, it is how
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