Jim Alesi and the Gay Marriage Vote or Why He Should Lose his Job.

Last week an New York State Constitutional Amendment that would have legalized gay marriage was voted down in the New York Senate. It was struck down by a margin of 38-24 with all 30 Republican State Senators voting no, along with 8 Democratic Senators also rejecting the bill. It was an important vote for gay rights advocates because if it had passed, Governor David Patterson has promised he would have signed the bill. However it did not, so advocacy groups have to wait for another fight.

I’m for marriage equality as long as consent is possible, and given. I don’t care about religious arguments against it, I disdain the slippery-slope arguments, and I have not seen one decent argument against marriage equality rights that has made me think. So one might think that my opinion that Jim Alesi should lose his job is based on his vote against the gay marriage bill. Will that one person would be wrong…sort of.

If he wants to be against gay marriage, I can respect his right to do so. He’s not my state senator, by about half a mile to be exact, and my senator Roebach did also vote against the gay marriage issue. What I don’t like about Jim Alesi are his reasons, his inability to play the fence while simultaneously not understanding what his job is supposed to be. In the local newspaper Alesi was trying to give his reasons for voting against the bill.

Apparently “politics” were involved, “Politics brought this bill to the floor, and politics brought this to its knees,” he says. “It’s all politics. To try to make believe that it’s not is silly.” Really Jim? Politics, in the State Senate? Well that really burns my bacon that we have let politics get in the way of conducting the business of government. It’s almost like there is a word that more accurately describes the day to day conducting of the business of government, and a word that describes the people that do that–you know the ones, the elected officials in charge of representing the needs of the greater whole? What is that word…other than “asshole” of course.

Yes, it was dreaded politics that killed the bill. Alesi is using the term “politics” the same way most people use the word “they*,” as in “they stole my car” or “they keep raising the prices.” We all nod our heads without a clue as to who specifically “they” are but know that there is someone or a group out there rendering us powerless to either get our car back or buy cheap booze. The way Alesi is using “politics” is like him saying that he really wanted to vote ‘yes’ for the bill but all of the damn politics got in the way. You see, he really was powerless in the face of all those politics.

That isn’t my favorite quote from him on this issue though. The second quote is so profoundly irritating that I want to move a mile down the road to vote against him when his term is up, “Politically, you never vote for a bill that’s going to fail.”

This is the sort of justification that people use when they vote for a candidate they don’t like instead of one that they do because that person “has no chance of winning.” No, Alesi that argument doesn’t fly in the face of the way the world actually works. First off the bill was defeated by 14 votes, which really means that if you could count on the 30 Republicans to vote for the bill the way they did and their party can be predicted to vote it still means that there are 32 Democrats waiting to cast their ballots. Because 8 of those Democrats decided to go against whatever it is their party allegedly stands for means that the bill was going to fail, but if half of them didn’t and you, Mr. Alesi, switched sides then it would have been up to the Lt. Governor to make the decision. I can see politically that you don’t get on the side of a bill that is going to die in a landslide, but this vote was never going to be a landslide.

What bothers me the most is that he seems to forlorn that “no” was how he had to vote. Since it was out of his hands. Maybe it was, maybe he knew that if he voted “yes” he would lose the next election. If that were the case though, wouldn’t all this posturing hurt his chances anyway?

If the emotions are real then essentially Alesi took his job as being more important than his beliefs, which makes me wonder what kind of people we have running this state (actually, it more than less confirms it). “I love in a political world…it’s not about courage.” No Jim it is, and if you really feel you are in the position where you have to make excuses it just shows that you don’t have any. No other Senator voting “no” has felt the need to make such spineless excuses. Take a lead from what Cheney said, they voted you in, now they have to deal with you.

*Like four years ago, a man in California changed his name to either “They” or “Them” and I wanted to insert the picture but I just couldn’t come up with the right search criteria.