November 16, 2007 -- ALBANY - Gov. Spitzer said at a private fund-raiser that he wants a Democratic-controlled state Senate to legalize gay marriage...as one of its first priorities in 2009, a witness to the remarks told The Post.

Spitzer, a gay-marriage proponent, pledged to help Democrats next November win the three Senate seats they need to gain the majority.

"One of the first things we're going to do when [Senate Minority Leader] Malcolm Smith is [majority] leader is gay marriage," the witness recounted Spitzer as telling some 60 people who paid up to $10,000 each to attend the event in Greenwich Village Wednesday night...

Spitzer spokeswoman Christine Anderson denied the governor said a Democratic-controlled Senate would make gay marriage a top priority...

While Spitzer's remarks to public and private gatherings are often recorded, Anderson said there was no recording from the event...

(Stirling, Ontario) A priest in the Anglican diocese of Ontario has been stripped of his license to marry after officiating at the wedding of a same-sex couple [in August]...

"I had issued a directive in 2003 that we would not bless same-sex relationships nor conduct marriages,'' said [Diocesan Bishop George Bruce]. "There was no canonical permission to do it. There are consequences (to such an action).''...

Two other Anglican priests [in Canada] have had their licenses to marry suspended for having officiated at same-sex weddings, and another has resigned over the issue...

Gay marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005.

...According to today's New York Times column [by Maureen Dowd], men are intimidated by smart women...and successful women won't ever find love.

Millions of women across the country just got a migraine.

Small-scale opinion surveys may hem and haw about men's preferences for subordinate women, but actions speak louder than words: According to this year's Current Population Survey research of 50,000 households, women who have graduate degrees and/or top salaries are more likely to marry than their less accomplished sisters...And once married, these smart, successful women may even be more likely to have children...

In a national survey...65% of single men said they are more attracted to women who are successful in their careers. Recent research published in the American Journal of Sociology seconded that finding:...[M]en are more sexually attracted to women in positions of power than they are to more subordinate women. Thus it appears that a woman's success and smarts can be a real aphrodisiac to today's men...

More education and income is a great asset -- not a liability -- in the marriage market...

For all those smart single women out there, here's some advice:

1. Stop reading Maureen Dowd's column...

"It is an insult to the fair sex to put up her case in support of birth-control by artificial methods. As it is, man has sufficiently degraded her for his lust, and artificial methods, no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her. I urge the advocates of artificial methods to consider the consequences. Any large use of the methods is likely to result in the dissolution of the marriage bond and in free love...Birth control to me is a dismal abyss."

...A groundbreaking new study by Brookings Institution scholar Julia Isaacs brings us good news: Two-thirds of us who were children in the late-1960s have grown up to earn more (adjusted for inflation) than our own parents did at the same age...

But the income gains are not equally shared. Between 1974 and 2004, the racial gap in median family income actually widened, with black family income dropping from 63 percent to 58 percent of the median white family income...

The American Dream plays a lot better in white than black.

The "marriage gap" between white and black plays a big part in this story. African-Americans are much less likely than their parents were (or than white adults are now) to be married. They are also more likely to have children outside of marriage than their parents were, or than white adults are today.

When 25 percent of children in a community are born outside of marriage (as among whites today) that's a serious problem. When almost 70 percent of children in a given community are born outside of marriage (as among African-Americans today) that's a tsunami blocking the intergenerational accumulation of human and social capital...

...U.S. District Court Judge Joel Pisano, sitting in Trenton, dismissed the [Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association’s suit against the NJ state Division on Civil Rights]...

The association [alleged] the division violated the association's free speech and religious freedom rights by investigating [complaints] filed by two lesbian couples who charge the association broke the state Law Against Discrimination when it refused to rent them the boardwalk pavilion for use in their civil-union ceremonies...

Pisano ruled that U.S. Supreme Court precedents dictated that federal courts must abstain from taking action on cases that are the subject of state-level judicial proceedings, which he ruled applied to this case...

[The association] is not swayed by Thursday's dismissal,...[it’s] chief administrative officer [the Rev. Scott Hoffman] said.

The association believes "absolutely that the state doesn't have the right to dictate to a religious organization to do something that's in opposition to our religious beliefs," [he] said...

Last month, a boy asked my 16-year-old daughter to his school's homecoming dance. She agreed to go, bought a new dress and made a hairdresser appointment.

The boy never bought tickets to the dance. Neither did his friends. They decided that attending homecoming wouldn't be cool, and instead planned to just dress up that night, go out for dinner and then hang out with their dates at someone's house.

My daughter was disappointed, as were her girlfriends. They would have loved to have been taken to the dance, to show off their dresses, to see and be seen...

[It’s] a telling example of the indifference with which young people today view dating, chivalry and romance.

Studies, of course, show more young people skipping romantic relationships in favor of "hooking up." As teens socialize in packs, forgo one-on-one dating and trade sex nonchalantly, it is no stretch to find that boys are asking girls to homecoming and not bothering to take them there...