A League of His Own

There's a great piece in today's Times about New York Assemblyman Daniel O’Donnell, who is doing everything he can to persuade his colleagues to legalize gay marriage, including flirting with hunky members of the Grand Old Party. Jeremy W. Peters reports: 

Here is how O'Donnell has pursued Republican Assemblyman Greg Ball’s vote: He cornered Ball in a statehouse elevator, and taunted him: vote for same-sex marriage, or you won’t get invited to my engagement party. O’Donnell has even told Ball, a square-jawed former Air Force captain, that he was “the best-looking guy in the Assembly, and he owed it to the gays to vote yes.”

With the Legislature set to take up the bill to legalize same-sex marriage on Tuesday, O’Donnell, the openly gay older brother of Rosie O’Donnell, has emerged as a tenacious, ingratiating, playful and sometimes prickly leader of the effort to pass the legislation. He has helped gather nearly 90 votes in the 150-member Assembly, which is expected to easily pass the bill. But he is also using the Assembly vote as a way to pressure members of the Senate, where the legislation’s fate will be decided, and demonstrate to wary senators that there is support in their districts for the bill.

 

The article doesn't say how much success O'Donnell's having with state senators. Nor does it mention that he was running around shirtless at the "furball" at the Gay and Lesbian Center on Saturday night(!) -- or that the handsome Captain Ball was accused of stalking his ex-girlfriend last year. Ball, who told The Times he would not bend for O'Donnell -- but "would love to attend [the engagement party], no matter how I vote” -- is apparently such a firm believer in "traditional" roles in society that he doesn't think men and women deserve equal pay (see video). What's more, his ex had to get a temporary protective order against him on grounds he stalked her and threatened to destroy her career at CNN. She also contended Ball taunted her by telling her he had a sexually transmitted disease he'd neglected to mention before. No wonder he doesn't want to besmirch marriage as it's known.

   Ball, who had a dead goat with a threatening note attached to it left on his lawn recently, is now running for Congress.