New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has allied with a bipartisan coalition of marriage equality groups to expand marriage to gays and lesbians before the end of the summer. The new umbrella group, called New Yorkers United for Marriage, includes Freedom To Marry, Marriage Equality New York, the Empire State Pride Agenda, and even the Log Cabin Republicans.

Meanwhile, opponents of the effort are launching a ‘Mayday for Marriage‘ bus tour “to inform New Yorkers as to the importance of the sacred institution of marriage,” financing automated calls urging voters to contact undecided lawmakers, and strengthening their ties to national anti-gay organizations. This morning, the New York Times profiled the religious coalition fighting against marriage equality and reported that New York Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan, who leads the Catholic Archdiocese of New York, will be taking a more prominent role in the campaign. Here he is comparing same-sex marriage to incest:

Archbishop Dolan addressed the same-sex marriage issue in March during an interview on the CBS program “60 Minutes,” urging policy makers not to tamper with the definition of what he termed “authentic marriage.”

“I love my mom, but I don’t have the right to marry her,” said the archbishop, whose national public profile as a spokesman for church values rose last year, when he was elected president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Last month, Good As You’s Jeremy Hooper discovered that another anti-marriage group — the Coalition To Save Marriage in New York — has been propagating the discredited theory that gay people can leave the homosexual “lifestyle” and become straight. From the group’s Facebook page:

Rev. Rubén Díaz, a state senator from the Bronx, is leading the opposition in the state Senate and has announced plans to hold a rally on May 15 in the Bronx. Diaz — who held a similar event in 2009 — has urged participants “to paralyze all traffic in the Bronx” on that day and expects up to 30,000 participants.

Cuomo continues to advocate for marriage equality, saying he’s “optimistic” it will pass. Business leaders and clergy from across the state have also offered their support.

Universities vie for the highest caliber faculty in a number of ways, including offering competitive partner benefits. In states like Michigan that do not offer recognition for even same-sex domestic partnerships, public universities there have still found ways to offer benefits to unmarried partners so they do not lose qualified candidates to schools in other states. According to an amendment to next year’s education budget by State Rep. Dave Agema (R), universities will now be punished to the tune of 5% of their funding for offering these benefits:

AGEMA: I had an amendment put into the education budget that takes 5% away from colleges that give same sex/unmarried benefits and places up to $60 million of that into the MPSRS K-12 budget if colleges do not stop skirting the law and the will of the people. Colleges can’t say they are short of money when they skirt the law and give such benefits. The Dems didn’t like this – it passed.

If the amendment becomes law, Michigan universities will suffer for trying to attract distinguished candidates to complement their faculty. In fact, the cuts would make it quite likely the universities would have to cut jobs in order to continue competing for strong candidates. And if the caliber of the university declines because of the lost faculty, it also makes it harder for the university to competitively attract students to pay tuition there.

Agema is just the latest Republican to prioritize a social agenda over the creation of jobs, echoing efforts in Pennsylvania and Minnesota to ban same-sex marriage despite huge budget shortfalls in both states. Given the dire economic situation in Michigan, attacking the LGBT community should be much lower on his list than creating and maintaining jobs or supporting education so that the state doesn’t lose taxpaying students in a “brain drain” to other states. But no, apparently the worst possible thing for Michigan would be for it to continue having gays and lesbians teaching at its universities.

The House and Senate budget bills now go to a conference committee to be combined into a final bill.

(H/T: AMERICAblog Gay)