Empire State Pride Agenda Condemns County Attorney Appointment Of Candidate With Direct Ties To Anti-Gay Alliance Defense Fund

The state’s largest gay rights organization is calling on County Executive Daniel McCoy to withdraw his nomination for county attorney — a well-known conservative lawyer — calling the man's appointment an "insult and a grave danger to LGBT New Yorkers." The Albany Times Union reports that Empire State Pride Agenda entered the fray over Thomas Marcelle's appointment to the county's top legal post Tuesday, ratcheting up pressure on McCoy and fellow Democrats in the County Legislature to scrap Marcelle's nomination over concerns about his ties to a conservative organization that opposes same-sex marriage, abortion, and separation of church and state. "Through is role as senior staff at the Alliance Defense Fund, Mr. Marcelle's resume is built on discrimination," Ross Levi, the organization's executive director, said. "At best, the county executive is being naive if he can't see how this appointment sends the wrong message to the people of Albany County." The group's legislative and political affairs director, Brian Coffin, meanwhile, has resigned his position on McCoy's transition team in protest, Levi said. McCoy has publicly defended his pick of Marcelle, a Conservative Party member and longtime counsel to the County Legislature's Republican minority, calling him a capable attorney well-suited to the rigors of the job. Marcelle's personal beliefs, whatever they may be, are irrelevant to his responsibilities as county attorney, McCoy has said. Marcelle himself, under questioning last week by county lawmakers who must confirm his appointment, said he would not let his private views affect his "sacred duty" to give the county the best representation he can. "I don't care how people conduct their personal lives," Marcelle told members of the legislature's personnel committee last week. "It's none of my business, and it's none of the government's business." Marcelle said he would uphold the state's new same sex marriage law "without hesitation." But Levi said Marcelle's voluntary association with the Alliance Defense Fund, which uses litigation to further its agenda, seriously calls Marcelle's statements into question. "That's a decision he made," Levi said. Marcelle told lawmakers that his work as senior counsel to the organization centered largely on cases involving free speech and defending equal access of groups to government buildings and forums — a subject that helped mint the Bethlehem attorney's legal credentials when he won a U.S. Supreme Court case for a religious group on the topic in 2001. Libby Post, a longtime local LGBT activist who helped found Empire State Pride Agenda 22 years ago, said opponents are about five votes shy of the 20 needed to block Marcelle's confirmation but will continue to lobby members of the County Legislature, in which Democrats hold a 29-10 majority. Post started the local campaign to oppose Marcelle this month, a move that some close to McCoy — the county's former Democratic Party chairman — chalked up to political manoeuvring among rival factions of the Democratic Party. Post has dismissed that idea. "It's an affront to all LGBT people that our tax dollars would go to support someone who does not have the interests of the entire community at heart," she said. A spokeswoman for McCoy could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday morning.