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The New York Times
In the Region
The Island
Partners, in Pursuit
of a Marriage License
By ROBIN FINN,
nytimes.com on the Web. May 11, 2008
East Hills -- NO sooner does
Daniel R. Pinello extricate himself from the driver’s seat of his kiwi green
Volkswagen Bug — you won’t find anything like it among the Mercedeses and
Beamers prowling the serpentine streets of this verdant suburban enclave — than
he points with pride to his vanity license plate. It’s an eight-letter
puzzler: MARJEQLT.
Prepare to be similarly stumped by the vanity plate — maybe it is more accurate
to refer to these year-old artifacts as statement plates — affixed to the
relatively tame vehicle (a gray Infiniti sedan) driven by his partner of 13
years, Lee Nissensohn. His automotive sobriquet is MARIJEQT. Where’s
Vanna White when you really need her?
The license plates, intended to be an on-message as opposed to in-your-face
icebreaker, have proven a bit of a disappointment, mainly because they are a
chore to decipher, in or out of traffic. Recently Mr. Pinello’s plate
caught the eye of a Cablevision installer who spent an afternoon bringing the
Pinello-Nissensohn household up to Optimum speed, but the conversation went
something like this: Cable guy, “What does it mean?” Mr. Pinello,
“It means marriage equality.” Cable guy, losing interest, “Oh, you’re a
lawyer.”
Oh, but Mr. Pinello, who earned his law degree at New York University and a
doctorate in political science at Yale, is more than that. A nonpracticing
lawyer (he teaches and has written two books on gay rights and the law), Mr.
Pinello, 58, is the midlife zealot who, alongside the male partner he
desperately wants to marry, committed a much-publicized, locally historic act of
civil disobedience April 28. He refused to leave Oyster Bay Town Hall at
closing time after officials politely rebuffed the couple’s request for a
marriage license.
What they left with, instead, courtesy of the Nassau County Police, were
matching pink summonses to appear in court in Hempstead on June 9; the charge is
trespassing. New York, like every other state except Massachusetts, does
not allow same-sex couples to marry.
Neither man expected Oyster Bay to flout the law and do the sentimental thing.
“We would have passed out if they had actually approved us,” says Dr. Nissensohn,
sitting beside his intended on a bird-print sofa in their living room.
Nor will they do the sentimental but impractical thing and cross the border to
Canada — or move to Massachusetts — just to marry. “This is where our home
and our jobs and our friends are; we pay first-class taxes the same as our
heterosexual neighbors, so why shouldn’t we have the same legal rights?” demands
Mr. Pinello, who takes a dim view of civil unions. “Nothing more than a
modern-day experiment with separate but equal.”
Their act of civil disobedience, along with a series of 17,000 household
mailings Mr. Pinello paid for with $25,000 from his savings, was solely intended
to force a same-sex marriage bill into the limelight in Albany. The State
Assembly passed a marriage equality bill last June, but a likeminded bill
co-sponsored by Senator Craig M. Johnson, a Port Washington Democrat, has
languished. Mr. Pinello and Dr. Nissensohn contend that Joseph L. Bruno,
the Senate majority leader, with complicity from Senator Carl L. Marcellino,
Republican of Syosset, is responsible. Mr. Marcellino has said he does not
support same-sex marriage.
“If Carl Marcellino was half as compassionate as the people we met in the Oyster
Bay town clerk’s office, we wouldn’t be having this problem,” Mr. Pinello
contends.
The couple met the old-fashioned way, via a Village Voice personals
advertisement that was confidently posted by Mr. Pinello, a
scholar/activist/lawyer and professor of government at the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice; it was hesitantly answered by Dr. Nissensohn, now 50, but then
a closeted dentist/vegetarian with a thriving practice in Roslyn and a habit of
feeding stray cats. (Their backyard feral colony — three have been
upgraded to house cats — numbers about a dozen.)
“I dragged him out of the closet,” Mr. Pinello says of their romance. Way
out of the closet. Just as Dr. Nissensohn has nearly converted Mr. Pinello
to vegetarianism (there’s tofu on the dinner menu!), Mr. Pinello has turned him
into an activist. Even Dr. Nissensohn’s mother is on board with his
crusade to marry. “She didn’t try to talk me out of this,” he says.
Neither did his patients.
“Our greatest hope,” Mr. Pinello says, “is that other same-sex couples will see
that lightning will not strike them if they do what we did, go to their local
Town Halls and publicly attempt to fill out marriage applications. It’s
not like touching the third rail.”
“We would have preferred not to tell the world about our private lives,” Dr.
Nissensohn says, “but we saw this as a necessity, not a choice.” Which is
why they say they are not intimidated by a smattering of hate mail (but as a
precaution, they did buy a new home security system).
“The most interesting replies have been the hostile ones, and yes, we’re kind of
asking for it by putting ourselves out there,” says Mr. Pinello, producing a
favorite. This is how it ends: “Until our government says its legal get
back in the closet where you belong. Now remove me from your mailing list
this instant. Worst wishes. Vinny”
Vinny, consider yourself removed.
E-mail:
theisland@nytimes.com
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