Gay Marriage Clash of Civil and Religious

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg plans to unveil a campaign to sell the most populous U.S. city as a gay-wedding destination after thousands marched to celebrate the state’s legalization of such marriages.

The “NYC I Do” campaign “will create millions of dollars in additional economic impact to the city’s $31 billion tourism industry,” Kimberly Spell, a spokeswoman for NYC & Company, the city’s marketing office, said yesterday in an e-mail. Bloomberg will unveil more details in coming days, she said.

Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law June 24 to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the Republican- controlled state Senate approved it. Passage came about a month after a group of Democratic state senators issued a report finding New York stood to reap $391 million from areas including economic activity and tax revenue within three years.

With rainbow flags waving and throbbing dance music blaring, as many as 6,000 marchers in Manhattan’s annual Gay Pride parade celebrated yesterday. Once the law takes effect July 24, New York will become the sixth and most populous state to legalize same-sex marriage and more than double the number of Americans living in such states to 35 million.

Some saw the religious-based objections to gay marriage as mere pretext for deeper, and harder to express public antipathy towards homosexuality. And others, like Mohler, see the provisions as mere fig leaves for defecting conservatives who wanted cover for their votes n favor of marriage. But whatever their political uses, the religious protections point to one aspect of the New York vote that will resonate throughout the country as the issue advances elsewhere.

"There is certainly a religious liberty issue," Andrew Koppelman, the John Paul Stevens Professor of Law at Northwestern University, told TIME after the New York vote. And it's not just a question for the prelates of the world who might bristle at the idea of the state ordering up gay marriage, a prospect that sent Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York City into rhetorical overdrive in the days leading up to the vote. Individuals who deeply oppose gay marriage could find themselves pushed to participate in ways big and small — and for that reason the protections in the New York law could become important.

"The 'guy who runs the tuxedo shop' is trying to live his life in accordance with his most deeply held ideals, which is just what gay couples are trying to do," Koppleman says. "The fairly mild religious accommodations in New York law will somewhat ease conflicts of that sort, in a way that is unlikely to significantly injure any gay people.