In the little hamlet of Oyster Bay, there is a stately, old town hall with a new slate roof.  Across the parking lot from this edifice reflecting the solidity of government stands a small, dreary brick building.  It houses the office of the Oyster Bay Town Clerk.  This is where the public comes.  Yesterday, the small, dreary brick building was the site of an  act of civil disobedience that bathed it in a glow of importance that made the stately old town hall trivial in comparison. 

About five dozen people stood in a steady rain outside the Oyster Bay clerk’s office yesterday, holding signs and chanting, “Let Dan and Lee Marry,” as an East Hills gay couple applied for a marriage license.

Dan Pinello, 58, and Lee Nissensohn, 50, walked in at 3:30 p.m. and when they walked out nearly two hours later, they each had a ticket for trespassing.

The two men had been prepared to be arrested to make a point about the need for a law in New York that would allow same-sex marriage. But the couple relented and agreed beforehand with town officials to leave once they were ticketed.

“We are law-abiding citizens,” said Pinello, a government professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. “We pay our taxes. We have no other choice left.”

The two men knew that they would be denied a marriage license.  They knew that they would be given summons, if not arrested, for what they were doing.  So did the town officials, who were fully aware of what was coming and what they could, and could not, do.  The clash was intended, but as Pinello said, they had no other choice left.

While the New York Assembly has passed a bill allowing same-sex marriage, it is tied up in committee in the Senate, where it will stay.

The goal of the couple’s “act of civil disobedience” – as they called it – was to persuade Sen. Carl Marcellino (R-Syosset) to pressure State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno (R-Brunswick) to take a bill that would allow same-sex marriage to the Senate floor for a vote.

A Marcellino spokeswoman has said the senator supports state law, which says marriage is between a man and a woman. Bruno has said he is against the bill.

The first step to Senate passage would be to get the bill to the floor.  That won’t happen as long as Joe Bruno rules the Senate.  Of course, there’s also the issue of passage even if it made it to the floor, but there’s no point in discussion until it gets out of committee.

Across the northern coasts of the United States, states are attempting to address the issue of gay marriage.  Some deal with it by giving it different names, feeling that by calling a “civil union” or “domestic partnership” they can avoid the religious implications that are the unspoken source of resistance.  After all, who would really care how two consenting adults relate to each other otherwise?  Not your thing?  So what?

This is the current state of the law:

Since 2004, Massachusetts has been the only state to allow same-sex couples to marry.

In 2000, Vermont became the first state to allow same-sex couples to enter into civil unions. Since then, Connecticut (2005), New Jersey (2007) and New Hampshire (2008) have allowed them.

Several states have domestic partnership laws: In Maine (2004) and Washington (2007), same-sex couples have limited rights. In California (2005) and Oregon (2008), partners have nearly all the same rights as married couples.

While our Puritan forefathers are rolling in their graves, changes are coming.  Slowly.  Piecemeal.  Academics discuss the economic implications of marriage, based upon the development of laws relating to property, responsibility and workplace benefits.  Most people don’t think about the “bundle of rights” that come along with the legal union of marriage.  They focus instead on the relatively new ideal that marriage reflects a union of love between two people, and that society denies the meaning of that love when it refuses to recognize a marriage.

It’s highly doubtful that Senators Bruno or Marcellino, both Republicans, will change their views because of yesterday’s act of civil disobedience.  But change is coming, despite their belief.  It’s like a wave that will eventually envelope New York.  Yesterday’s exceptionally well-handled act of civil disobedience may prove to be the pebble that starts the ripples that ultimately spread out and become the tidal wave that overcomes the steadfast resistance to change. 

A revolution may have started in the small, dreary brick building across from the stately, old town hall.  It couldn’t have happened in a more appropriate place.