The Bronx State Supreme Court - which is not the same thing as the state's highest court, the Court of Appeals - in a ruling issued Tuesday backed governor Paterson's executive order to state agencies to recognize out-of-state marriage licenses for same-sex couples.

The New York Times:

The decision, issued by Justice Lucy A. Billings of State Supreme Court in the Bronx, a trial-level court, is the latest in a string of rulings by state courts that have upheld the right of same-sex couples who were married in other jurisdictions to have their marital status recognized in New York, even though gay couples may not marry within the state. A bill to allow gay unions passed the State Assembly last year but has not come up for a vote in the Senate.

The suit was filed in June by lawmakers who opposed the governor’s order and by other opponents of same-sex marriage, who argued that Mr. Paterson had effectively usurped the Legislature’s role by issuing the order. The governor said the order, issued in May, was made to protect the state from litigation by gay couples legally married in places like Canada or Massachusetts.

The decision was rendered in a suit filed by Serph Maltese, Marty Golden and the virulently bigoted Alliance Defense Fund, and will now probably be appealed through the state court system by deep-pocketed extremist interests allied with the embattled Senator Maltese.

Ironically, Maltese and the other dead-enders who joined his suit have only to look to their own party's convention, currently unfolding fitfully in St. Paul, to see a shifting tide.

A group of gay and lesbian Republicans has traveled to the site of the GOP convention this week to help convince its party that it is time to stop being on the "wrong side" of the same-sex marriage issue.

"Clearly, the tide is turning," said Scott Tucker, communications director for the Log Cabin Republicans. "It's important for the Republican Party to be inclusive on this issue, because we are risk of being on the wrong side of history."

New York republicans aware of this state's demographics like to pretend that they're not quite the same people as their extremist, hateful cohorts in other states. They're the reasonable ones, supposedly.

Problem is, that's just not true.