Last night’s passage of New York State’s gay-marriage law was cause for celebration among decent people everywhere. I wish I could have taken part in the Manhattan celebrations outside the Stonewall near Sheridan Square, or on the 8th Avenue strip from 14th Street to 23rd Street. I wasn’t in Berlin either when the wall came down.

Senator Mark J. Grisanti, a Republican from Buffalo, was the 33rd vote for the bill. “I apologize for those who feel offended,” he said. “I cannot deny a person, a human being, a taxpayer, a worker, the people of my district and across this state, the State of New York, and those people who make this the great state that it is the same rights that I have with my wife.”

It goes without saying that President Obama is too scared of hee-haw swing voters to have supported it, but hats off to Governor Andrew Cuomo.

“Ever since I had a memory about what my mother taught me, and my grandparents taught me, I believed that discriminating against people was wrong,” Obama said in New York two nights ago. “And I believed that discrimination because of somebody’s sexual orientation or gender identity ran counter to who we are as a people. It’s a violation of the basic tenets on which this nation was founded. I believe that gay couples deserve the same human rights as every other couple in this country.”