Queerty interviews Alan Van Capelle, executive director of Empire State Pride Agenda, on the fall of Eliot Spitzer, the rise of David Paterson, and the outlook for equal marriage in New York State. Worth reading in its entirety. Here are some excerpts.

On politicians and the gay community:

Somehow people say [of elected officials], “They’re friends of our community because they came to our dinner or spoke to our crowd”. There’s also, “Well, they’re a friend of our community because they voted on a bill, but they didn’t sponsor it and these are our friends”. I think we’ve lowered the bar for what friends are, but even if we raised the bar ten times where it should have been, the fact that Spitzer became the first governor in the country to introduce marriage equality legislation absolutely means something.

On how introducing a marriage equality bill helped us:

We would never have gotten a vote in the Assembly for marriage equality had the Governor not made this a program bill and a priority for his administration. Had Governor Spitzer not introduced marriage equality bill, we wouldn’t have had a bill in the Assembly, a bill that had the weight of the executive behind it, we wouldn’t have had a vote and wouldn’t be 2/3 of the way to winning 1,324 rights in New York. I know people who personally voted for the bill because Governor Spitzer sent it out as a program bill. I know that for a fact, because before the bill was introduced, we had 35 on the record supporters for marriage equality and when we introduced the bill, we suddenly picked up more sponsors.

On Paterson’s pro-LGBT views:

[T]his is a guy with whom I sat with last year on countless evenings going over with him a list of Assembly members who were either on the fence or had a soft “no,” and he would help me and the Pride Agenda press strategies where we went to individuals. Paterson would say, “Okay, this person said ‘yes’? Let me call them tomorrow and make sure that’s a real yes or a soft yes”.

On the day of the vote, which I have never seen in my history at Albany, the Lt. Governor showed up on the floor 45-minutes before the Assembly debate and personally talked to the people who supported the bill and then came up to the gallery to talk to the gay community and tell them he had our backs. That had never happened before in a decade that I’ve been going up to Albany. It was really incredible.

On how he feels about Spitzer now:

… LGBT New Yorkers are not only part of an LGBT community, but we’re also New Yorkers, so when I’m wearing my LGBT hat, then, yes, he’s absolutely delivered to our community. But I’m also a New Yorker, so if these allegations are true, I’m really angry that our Governor did this. I don’t think – if he’s proved to have done money laundering and other stuff he could be charged with, I don’t think that’s necessarily somebody we want to be with. No one’s saying he’s not a friend of our community.