c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld a lowercourt's order keeping demonstrators at least 15 feet away from thedoorways and driveways of clinics in upstate New York that were thetargets of blockades and boisterous protests in the early 1990s.The decision reaffirmed the court's broadly protective approachtoward maintaining access for patients entering abortion clinics.
In an opinion by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who also wrotea 1994 opinion that upheld a similar buffer zone around a Florida abortion clinic, the court rejected the argument that the orderviolated the free speech rights of anti-abortion protesters. As inthe Florida case, the vote on Wednesday was 6 to 3, with JusticesAntonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Clarence Thomas dissenting.
At the same time, the court today struck down a separateprovision of the New York injunction, under which demonstratorswere forbidden to come within 15 feet of people entering or leavingthe clinics. The chief justice said the ``floating'' andconsequently indefinite nature of this movable buffer zone made itdifficult to administer and raised the prospect that it wouldsuppress more speech than necessary to protect the government'sinterest in public safety around the clinics.
The vote to strike down the floating zone was 8 to 1, withJustice Stephen Breyer objecting that there was no need to decidethe issue because it was not clear how this aspect of theinjunction would actually work.
Still another portion of the injunction was also upheld by avote of 6 to 3. Under this provision, two protesters at a time cancome inside the fixed 15-foot buffer zone to talk to women in anon-threatening way and try to persuade them against having theirscheduled abortions. But these ``sidewalk counselors,'' as they areknown, must ``cease and desist'' and withdraw outside the zone ifrequested to do so, a requirement that the majority opinion onWednesday found permissable.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in New York City, upheldall aspects of the injunction in a 1995 ruling.
The split nature of the decision on Wednesday permitted bothsides in the abortion debate to claim a measure of victory. As apractical matter, however, the court's reaffirmation of its supportfor fixed buffer zones around abortion clinics was the mostimportant of the holdings, because these are common features ofinjunctions and ordinances that are in effect around the country.
About one-third of the roughly 900 abortion clinics in thecountry are protected by buffer zones, according to Vicki Saporta,executive director of the National Abortion Federation, a tradeassociation of abortion providers.
``We see the fixed buffer zone as the key element in protectingclinics,'' Ms. Saporta said in an interview on Wednesday. ``With alarge enough buffer zone, you have less need for the floatingzone.'' She said the clinics would now go back to the FederalDistrict Court in Buffalo, N.Y., to seek an extension of the fixedzone.
By contrast, the floating ``bubble zones,'' as they are commonlycalled, are a novel approach that have been used in only a relativehandful of cases, although had the court endorsed the concept inthis case, the use would have expanded quickly.
Rehnquist's opinion did not flatly rule out a floating zone,concluding only that ``it cannot be sustained on this record'' fora variety of reasons, including the fact that the sidewalk outsideone of the clinics was only 17 feet wide. That meant that ademonstrator who wanted to walk alongside someone entering orleaving the clinic would probably have to walk in the street ifrequired to stay 15 feet away, the chief justice said.
The decision on Wednesday, Schenck vs. Pro-Choice Network, No.95-1065, marked the court's latest effort to balance the freespeech rights of anti-abortion protesters against the public safetyand health concerns involved in controlling potential violencearound abortion clinics.
As he did in the earlier case from Florida, Rehnquist led thecourt in a close examination of the events that led the lower courtto adopt the injunction at issue. In this case, it was a series ofblockades, altercations and aggressive counseling that the chiefjustice said ``often devolved into `in your face' yelling, andsometimes into pushing, shoving and grabbing.''
Referring also to ``harassment and intimidation of patients,''the chief justice said the description of the demonstrations, bythe anti-abortion group that appealed the injunction, as peacefuland nonobstructive ``ignores the record in this case.'' Hecontinued, ``Our review of the record convinces us that defendants'conduct was indeed extraordinary, and that based on this conductthe district court was entitled to conclude that keeping defendantsaway from the entrances was necessary to insure access.''
Martha Davis, chief counsel for the NOW Legal Defense Fund,which was co-counsel in the case for the clinics, said that it was``very encouraging'' that the court ``took the record so seriouslyand didn't credit the other side's characterization of it.'' Thedecision ``gives us a lot of tools to work with,'' she said.
Jay Sekulow, the lawyer who argued the appeal for theprotesters, said the court's disapproval of the floating bufferzone was a ``tremendous victory for free speech.'' Sekulow is chiefcounsel for the American Center for Law and Justice, anorganization founded by the evangelist Pat Robertson.
In his dissenting opinion, which Thomas and Kennedy also signed,Scalia said the majority opinion ``makes a destructive inroad uponFirst Amendment law.'' He said the majority was not entitled torely on a public safety rationale to uphold the injunction, becauseprotecting public safety was ordinarily the concern of thegovernment while this case began as a private lawsuit by theclinics.
Under the majority's approach, ``every private suit makes thedistrict judge a sort of one-man Committee of Public Safety,''Scalia said, adding, ``There is no precedent for this novel anddangerous proposition.''
The case attracted wide attention in part because the SupremeCourt has yet to review a new federal law, the Freedom of Access toClinic Entrances Act, which makes it a crime to use force orintimidation to interfere with access to an abortion clinic. Allthe federal appeals courts that have ruled on the 1994 law haveupheld it, and the justices have turned down several challenges toits constitutionality.
c.1997 Bloomberg News
Washington, Feb. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Supreme Court today saidjudges can't issue orders requiring anti- abortion protesters tostay away from patients and staff members entering or leaving an abortion clinic.
In a decision that splintered the nine justices, an 8-1 highcourt majority said a lower court's order requiring protesters tostay out of a floating 15-foot ``buffer zone'' around clinicpatients violates constitutional free-speech protections.
``We strike down the floating buffer zones around peopleentering and leaving the clinics because they burden more speechthan is necessary to serve the relevant governmental interests,''Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote for the majority.``Leafletting and commenting on matters of public concern areclassic forms of speech that lie at the heart of the FirstAmendment, and speech in public areas is at its most protected onpublic sidewalks.''
At the same, however, a 6-3 majority upheld an injunction thatset up fixed requirements to keep anti-abortion protesters at least15 feet away from a clinic entrance and driveway. That measure, thecourt said, satisfied the government's interest in maintainingorder on streets and sidewalks, without unduly restricting thefree-speech rights of protesters.
``The fixed buffer zones . . . are necessary to ensure thatpeople and vehicles trying to enter or exit the clinic property orclinic parking lots can do so,'' Rehnquist wrote.
The case stemmed from an appeal by anti-abortion protesters inBuffalo, New York, who participated in protests organized by thecontroversial Operation Rescue and other groups. They said a courtwent beyond what was necessary by effectively barring them fromapproaching abortion clinic patients.
It was the high court's first look at the controversial questionsince a 1994 decision, which said judges can impose somerestrictions on anti-abortion protests, as long as they're not moresevere than needed to prevent violence and guarantee a woman'sright to have an abortion.
Questions about limits on protests have become more urgent inrecent years, as increasingly militant anti-abortion groups haveconfronted women at the doors of abortion clinics. In some recentinstances, clinic workers have been killed.
In striking down the floating buffer zones around clinicpatients, Rehnquist's opinion was supported by Justices John PaulStevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy,David Souter, Clarence Thomas, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. JusticeStephen Breyer dissented.
The decision to uphold the fixed buffer zones around clinicentrances was backed by Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Souter,Ginsburg, and Breyer. Scalia, Kennedy, and Thomas dissented.
Writing for the three dissenters, Scalia said the court basedits ruling on a ``novel and dangerous'' theory that thegovernment's interest in public order justified the decision --eventhough that was not the reason cited by a lower court.
``This is a wonderful expansion of judicial power. Rather thancourts' being limited to . . . the complaints before them, thecourt today announces that a complaint gives them . . . power todecree what may be necessary to protect -- not the plaintiff, butthe public interest,'' Scalia wrote. ``Every private suit makes thedistrict judge a sort of one-man Committee of Public Safety.''
The case is Schenk v. Pro-Choice Network of Western New York,95-1065.
c.1997 The Boston Globe
<
WASHINGTON—Women seeking abortions have a right to safe accessto a doctor's office or clinic, but they can't claim totalprotection from heckling, shouting, and other forms of verbalharassment by anti abortion protesters, the Supreme Court ruledWednesday.
The justices upheld a New York court's power to ban protestersfrom blocking clinic doors and driveways but struck down itsattempt to create ``floating'' 15-foot buffer zones around patientsgoing to and from the buildings.
Abortion-rights groups took solace that the court had reaffirmeda landmark 1994 decision upholding the right of local authoritiesto control antiabortion demonstrations in the interest of publicsafety and a woman's individual rights.
``With today's ruling, the US Supreme Court affirmed that womenand health care workers are entitled to enter ... facilitieswithout fear of harrassment,'' Nicki Nichols Gamble said in astatement from the Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts.``However ... our concern for our patients and staff extendsfarther than 15 feet.''
^@But a divided court also gave antiabortion forces a victory instriking down part of the New York ruling that allowed the bufferzones around patients, saying the constitutional guarantee of freespeech allows shouting, leafleting, arguing, and other forms ofexpression even when they annoy and disturb people.
``Leafleting and commenting on matters of public concern areclassic forms of speech that lie at the heart of the FirstAmendment, and speech in public areas is at its most protected onpublic sidewalks, a prototypical example of a traditional publicforum,'' the Supreme Court ruled in a decision written by ChiefJustice William Rehnquist.
``In public debate our own citizens must tolerate insulting andeven outrageous speech in order to provide adequate breathing spaceto the freedoms protected by the First Amendment,'' the SupremeCourt ruled.
The case decided Wednesday, Schenck vs. Pro-Choice Network, wasprompted by a series of demonstrations in upstate New York in 1990in which Operation Rescue and other groups tried to block thedriveways and doors of abortion clinics. The court found that womenseeking abortions were surrounded, grabbed, pushed and yelled at,and local police were harassed.
By a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court upheld part of the New Yorkinjunction that kept protesters 15 feet from the clinic and itsdriveways.
Voting in the majority were Rehnquist, Justices Stephen G.Breyer, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O'Connor, David H. Souter andRuth Bader Ginsburg. Dissenting, as they had in the 1994 case, wereJustices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas.
But antiabortion forces were pleased the court upheld by an 8-1vote a protester's right to approach patients and vigorously argueagainst the procedure. Only Breyer dissented.
``I see no special need here for the Court to make an apparentlygeneral statement about the law of `floating bubbles,' which laterdevelopments may show to have been unnecessary,'' Breyer wrote.``Nor is there any realistic reason to believe that the provisionwill deter the exercise of constitutionally protected speechrights.''
The high court has now struck down two injunctions that gavewomen seeking abortions protection from protesters who approach andargue, chastise, and try to ``counsel'' them.
In 1994 the high court struck down a Florida court's injunctionforbidding protesters from approaching patients within 300 feet ofa clinic or medical office. The ``floating'' buffer zone the courtstruck down Wednesday allowed two sidewalk ``counselors'' to askpatients for permission to approach but banned all otherdemonstrations within 15 feet of patients or their vehicles.
In other actions Wednesday, the court:
_Ruled 7-2 that police officers can order passengers as well asdrivers out of vehicles during traffic stops. Attorney GeneralJanet Reno successfully argued the case herself before the court inJanuary.
_Unanimously decided in a St. Louis case that police sergeantsand lieutenants are white-collar employees and therefore are exemptfrom federal overtime laws.
_Ruled unanimously in a Florida case that states cannotretroactively cancel early release credits given to inmates to easeprison overcrowding.
c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<
NEW YORK—To paraphrase Pat Moynihan, the state of theDemocratic Party in New York might best be described as definingcompetency down.
Someday we might get a scintillating race for Congress betweenGeorge Stephanopoulos, swaddled in Ralph Lauren, and Andrew Cuomo,swaddled in Kennedy legends.
But for now, the Democrats have no heart, no party structure, nomessage and no candidates that make your blood run fast.
The once-proud party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Al Smith,Bobby Kennedy, Gore Vidal, Jimmy Breslin, Norman Mailer, MarioCuomo and Ed Koch is a mess, full of pipsqueaks, opportunists,complainers and namby-pambys who are barely able to project animage.
It is unfathomable to think of any of the Democratic candidatesfor mayor of New York City actually being mayor. The gang of four _Sal and Al and Ruth and Freddy—had their first high-profile forumat the Sheraton on Wednesday, competing for the privilege ofgetting shellacked in the fall by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
It was a bad sign for the Democrats that the most appealing andcommanding figure was Al Sharpton. You know you're in trouble whenSharpton is the class of the field.
He has had his moments as racial divider, mountebank and LouisFarrakhan ally. But at least the minister, who's now in theRepairer of the Breach business, is not smaller-than-life orhumorless.
He said the Giuliani administration ``is like the RockyMountains. The higher up you get, the whiter it gets.'' For goodmeasure, he chastised The New York Post for coming up with a panelfrom the newspaper that was all white.
Ruth Messinger, the Manhattan borough president, faded into thewoodwork despite all the complaints by her old liberal friends herethat she has turned into a brazen self-promoter. Murray Kempton hassaid he won't vote for her because ``she personifies the evil oflesser evilism.''
To see New York Democrats so clueless about the game theyinvented is enough to turn Moynihan wistful about the Tammany days.
``At least Tammany generated public works,'' said Moynihan, whowas visiting the city on Wednesday. ``If you don't think so, lookat the George Washington Bridge. The new generation of reformDemocrats generates government employment through social servicesinstead of government opportunity. They just don't have theefficiency. At least the Tammany people knew how to do things.''
Republicans have taken over the cities as laboratories for theirpolicies, because Democrats kept blowing up the laboratories.
``We were never able to accept or confront the social decline ofour cities as something which was real,'' Moynihan says. ``It wassomething that was not easily turned around, but it was absolutelycritical to try. We were in denial and learning disabled about itall.''
Sure, Rudolph Giuliani has a talent to annoy. Even his wife,Donna, is attempting an escape into Hollywood, preferring to spendtime on a movie about the more annoying Larry Flynt.
But the mayor has been efficient. He has drastically lowered thecrime rate and reduced the welfare rolls and soothed some of thequotidian annoyances that define life in the city.
``If crime goes down, you're a good mayor,'' Moynihan says. ``IfWall Street booms, you're a good mayor.''
The most revealing moment at Wednesday's forum was whenquestioners from the conservative, Giuliani-loving New York Postmischievously pressed the liberals about whether each would, ifelected mayor, marry a gay couple at City Hall.
All four endorsed gay marriage, although some were a bitreluctant to say they would perform such a marriage at City Hall.
Sharpton breezily replied: ``I'm the only candidate who canperform a gay marriage whether I win or lose this election.''
Ms. Messinger talked about ``my daughter who is a lesbian, whohas given me a great granddaughter.''
Sal Albanese, the Brooklyn city councilman, replied: ``I don'tknow if I would perform a gay marriage at City Hall. I support theidea of gay marriages.''
Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president, hedged with``That's the city clerk's job,'' before relenting: ``I wouldperform the marriage of any friend who asked me to, gay orstraight.''
This is what passes for a litmus test in New York.
I'm headed for the shuttle.
The New York Times said in an editorial on Thursday, Feb. 20:
NEW YORK—Wednesday's Supreme Court ruling in a nationallysignificant case from upstate New York represents a thoughtfulattempt to reconcile the First Amendment rights of abortionopponents with the government's obligation to insure women safeaccess to reproductive health facilities.
The case concerned the ``constructive blockades'' used byanti- abortion groups at clinics around the country. Their purposeis to impede access to clinics by requiring patients and staff torun a threatening gantlet. Responding to such obstruction of theconstitutionally protected right of choice on abortion, a federaljudge in Buffalo carved out a remedy four years ago.
The judge issued an injunction keeping most demonstrators 15feet from clinic and parking lot entrances. He also created amoving 15-foot buffer zone around people entering and leavingclinics. Under his order, a ``sidewalk counselor'' seeking todissuade a woman from having an abortion could approach her, buthad to withdraw beyond 15 feet if she signaled a desire to end theencounter.
Given the pattern of abuse at local clinics, the ``floatingbubble'' approach seemed a reasonable precautionary response.Wednesday, however, the Supreme Court, by an 8-1 vote, struck downthe bubble approach as unconstitutional. The court cited thepractical difficulties of enforcing the moving buffer zones andtheir interference with demonstrators' ability to communicate withpeople walking on public sidewalks.
Far more significant, though, is what the court approved. By a6-3 majority the court upheld as constitutional the fixed 15-footbuffer zone around clinic entrances and parking lots, in essencereaffirming its sound decision in a 1994 case upholding a larger36-foot demonstration-free zone around a Florida clinic. Further,the court suggested that in allowing two sidewalk counselors at atime to enter the buffer zone, the judge had gone further thanrequired to accommodate the free-speech rights of anti-abortionprotesters.
The new decision still leaves room for future squabbles abouthow large a buffer zone can be and where to draw the line betweenprotected free speech and unacceptable harassment. But wisely, thecourt has reinforced a crucial guiding principle. The right ofabortion opponents to express themselves, important though it is,is not a license to obstruct or intimidate.
<
c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service<
CHICAGO—At a dinner party last Saturday night, I found myselfseated among some of the most loyal of Clinton enthusiasts in thismost loyally Democratic of cities. But when I raised the questionof Madeleine Albright's sudden discovery of her roots, there wasonly eye-rolling and sarcasm. One prominent Jewish friend of boththe Clintons and the secretary of state didn't hesitate tocharacterize Albright's professed ignorance about her past: ``Shedidn't want to know from Jewish.''
The question of what Madeleine Albright knew about her past andwhen she knew it is hardly of Watergate significance. Her religion,whatever it is, is irrelevant to her job, for which she isabundantly qualified. But her story isn't going away just yet, inpart because it upsets more than a few American Jews, and in partbecause she seems to be shading the truth. In the classic Clintonadministration manner, so reminiscent of Bill Clinton's shiftingaccounts of his draft history or Al Gore 
's varying recollections ofhis misadventures at a Buddhist temple, Albright has with her ownwords turned a fascinating, poignant but potentially short-livedstory into what might be called (though presumably not by her) abig megillah.
When Michael Dobbs of The Washington Post first reported thatAlbright's parents were Jewish converts to Catholicism and that shehad lost three of her grandparents (among other close relatives) tothe Holocaust, she pronounced these revelations ``obviously a majorsurprise.'' But it turned out that others had written letters totell her of these facts in years past—including the mayor of herfather's hometown and a Jewish first cousin who lived with her andher parents in exile in London during the war. Her paternalgrandparents' deaths are also recorded on a memorial list publishedin Terezin in 1995 of Czech Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Now Albright—whose much-admired catch phrase until recentlywas ``I tell it like it is''—is changing her story. In arelentless interview by Lally Weymouth in this week's Newsweek,Albright says that her initial response to The Post's findings wasmisquoted. ``I was not surprised about my Jewish origin,'' shesays. ``What I was surprised about was that my grandparents died inconcentration camps.'' But as recently as in a ``60 Minutes''interview aired on Feb. 9, she told Ed Bradley that both her Jewishorigins and her grandparents' fate had been ``totally'' unknown toher.
This prevarication, unlike her family history, does reflect onAlbright's credibility as a public servant. But what is moretroubling to many Jews, myself among them, is her lack of curiosityabout her roots from the start, no matter whether she found out thefacts this month or years ago. What smart, serious, sensitivestudent of history, let alone Nazi refugee, makes no effort to findout how her grandparents died? Or turns her back on a cousin withwhom she lived like a sister during her most formative years?
Such a determined ignorance about one's own family is so out ofcharacter for a woman of Albright's intelligence and quality,Jewish or not, that it has prompted a floating nationalkaffeeklatsch of armchair psychoanalysis. Deborah Lipstadt, aprofessor of Jewish studies at Emory University who has longcharted America's conflicted relationship with the Holocaust,argues that for Albright to question her father's version of herhistory would be tantamount to destroying the hero and role modelwho most shaped her life.
But whatever the explanation, Albright's story also fascinatesand troubles because it exposes a raw nerve in American Jewishhistory. In the postwar America in which Albright came of age, itwas not, as Ms. Lipstadt puts it, ``convenient to be Jewish'': notif you wanted an unimpeded path to Wellesley or the nicest suburbsor the best jobs. It was the time for heavy-duty assimilation, forname changes and nose jobs and reform synagogues that bordered onthe Episcopalian; even the Holocaust was not talked about tooloudly among American Jews in the 1950s.
However unintentionally, Madeleine Albright actually lived thedarkest fantasy of the most assimilationist American Jews of thattime. Her family's obliteration of its Jewish past—extreme casethough it may be—wouldn't resonate so loudly if it didn't awakenguilty memories in so many other American homes.
c.1997 N.Y. Times News Service< NEW YORK—To paraphrase Pat Moynihan, the state of theDemocratic Party in New York might best be described as definingcompetency down. Someday we might get a scintillating race for Congress betweenGeorge Stephanopoulos, swaddled in Ralph Lauren, and Andrew Cuomo,swaddled in Kennedy legends. But for now, the Democrats have no heart, no party structure, nomessage and no candidates that make your blood run fast. The once-proud party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Al Smith,Bobby Kennedy, Gore Vidal, Jimmy Breslin, Norman Mailer, MarioCuomo and Ed Koch is a mess, full of pipsqueaks, opportunists,complainers and namby-pambys who are barely able to project animage. It is unfathomable to think of any of the Democratic candidatesfor mayor of New York City actually being mayor. The gang of four _Sal and Al and Ruth and Freddy—had their first high-profile forumat the Sheraton on Wednesday, competing for the privilege ofgetting shellacked in the fall by Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. It was a bad sign for the Democrats that the most appealing andcommanding figure was Al Sharpton. You know you're in trouble whenSharpton is the class of the field. He has had his moments as racial divider, mountebank and LouisFarrakhan ally. But at least the minister, who's now in theRepairer of the Breach business, is not smaller-than-life orhumorless. He said the Giuliani administration ``is like the RockyMountains. The higher up you get, the whiter it gets.'' For goodmeasure, he chastised The New York Post for coming up with a panelfrom the newspaper that was all white. Ruth Messinger, the Manhattan borough president, faded into thewoodwork despite all the complaints by her old liberal friends herethat she has turned into a brazen self-promoter. Murray Kempton hassaid he won't vote for her because ``she personifies the evil oflesser evilism.'' To see New York Democrats so clueless about the game theyinvented is enough to turn Moynihan wistful about the Tammany days. ``At least Tammany generated public works,'' said Moynihan, whowas visiting the city on Wednesday. ``If you don't think so, lookat the George Washington Bridge. The new generation of reformDemocrats generates government employment through social servicesinstead of government opportunity. They just don't have theefficiency. At least the Tammany people knew how to do things.'' Republicans have taken over the cities as laboratories for theirpolicies, because Democrats kept blowing up the laboratories. ``We were never able to accept or confront the social decline ofour cities as something which was real,'' Moynihan says. ``It wassomething that was not easily turned around, but it was absolutelycritical to try. We were in denial and learning disabled about itall.'' Sure, Rudolph Giuliani has a talent to annoy. Even his wife,Donna, is attempting an escape into Hollywood, preferring to spendtime on a movie about the more annoying Larry Flynt. But the mayor has been efficient. He has drastically lowered thecrime rate and reduced the welfare rolls and soothed some of thequotidian annoyances that define life in the city. ``If crime goes down, you're a good mayor,'' Moynihan says. ``IfWall Street booms, you're a good mayor.'' The most revealing moment at Wednesday's forum was whenquestioners from the conservative, Giuliani-loving New York Postmischievously pressed the liberals about whether each would, ifelected mayor, marry a gay couple at City Hall. All four endorsed gay marriage, although some were a bitreluctant to say they would perform such a marriage at City Hall. Sharpton breezily replied: ``I'm the only candidate who canperform a gay marriage whether I win or lose this election.'' Ms. Messinger talked about ``my daughter who is a lesbian, whohas given me a great granddaughter.'' Sal Albanese, the Brooklyn city councilman, replied: ``I don'tknow if I would perform a gay marriage at City Hall. I support theidea of gay marriages.'' Fernando Ferrer, the Bronx borough president, hedged with``That's the city clerk's job,'' before relenting: ``I wouldperform the marriage of any friend who asked me to, gay orstraight.'' This is what passes for a litmus test in New York. I'm headed for the shuttle. Go back to SOCIOLOGY 260 -- Sociology of Marriage and the Family Page If you have any questions or comments please email:COMMENTARY: WORMS IN THE APPLE
By MAUREEN DOWD<