From the Associated Press:
The floats were there, the music and dancing, too–all the usual staples of one of the world’s oldest and largest gay pride parades. But this year, something new joined the spectacle on the streets of New York City: proposals and wedding plans.
New York’s parade turned into a carnival-like celebration of same-sex marriage Sunday as hundreds of thousands of revelers rejoiced at the state’s new law giving gay couples the same marital rights as everyone else.
“We’ve been waiting to get married in Central Park for years, and now we got here just in time for history to be made,” said Bryce Croft of Kettering, Ohio, who attended the festivities with her partner, Stephanie Croft.
The two women are not yet legally married although they share the same name, and they are in the process of moving to New York and getting married. They were in a Manhattan restaurant late Friday when they learned that the bill had passed.
“We cried over dinner, right into the mozzarella sticks,” Stephanie Croft said, adding that they had already selected a spot in Central Park–the boulder she had marked with Bryce’s name two years ago. After the two get settled, Bryce planned to seek a sex-change operation to become a man.
The star of Sunday’s show was undoubtedly New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who fought to get the bill over its final hurdle in the GOP-led state Senate. The law makes New York the sixth state to extend full marriage rights to gay couples and doubles the number of gay people nationwide who are eligible to marry.
“Thank you, Governor Cuomo” and “Promise kept” read signs lining both sides of Fifth Avenue. Throngs of cheering supporters all but mobbed Cuomo as he led off the parade just after noon.
“New York has sent a message to the nation,” the governor said before the march. “It is time for marriage equality.”
Read the whole thing here.
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