The New York State Catholic Conference reports that homosexual-rights activists received a setback by state Court of Appeals rulings last week.

According to the New York State Catholic Conference, the New York State Court of Appeals did rule in favor of the defendants in Godfry v. Spano and Lewis v. NYS Department of Civil Service regarding the state’s recognition of same-sex “marriages” from other states.

However, the Catholic Conference’s director of communications, Dennis Poust, characterized it as a defeat for homosexual “marriage” advocates. Basically, the ruling said that the state civil service could give all the rights of married (heterosexual) couples under state law to same-sex couples that were “married” in a jurisdiction where it was considered legal, such as Massachusetts, Connecticut or Canada.

“While the court affirmed the rights of civil service to provide those benefits,” said Poust, “what it didn’t do is go the step the gay-rights activists wanted, and that was to impact the state marriage recognition law, which is much broader.”

He explained the court ruling was limited to state workers. Impacting the marriage-recognition law would have applied the ruling to all employers, private and public, and would have given same-sex “married” couples every right of (heterosexual) married couples.

“Then employers would be required to offer spousal benefits to them, too,” he said. “But the court declined to take that step. That was really a setback for the homosexual-rights advocates who hoped to use these cases to force recognition.”

The Spano case applied only to Westchester County, but the Lewis case applied to all state workers, rendering the Spano case moot.

“The court’s ruling in this case was so narrow that by any measure, it must be considered a victory for New Yorkers who oppose the redefinition of the timeless institution of marriage,” said Richard Barnes, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference. “The court merely held that the state Department of Civil Service and Westchester County Executive Andrew Spano (defeated in November 2009 elections) were within their legal authority to extend marital benefits to ‘spouses’ of civil employees. However, the state specifically declined to expand the ruling to alter the state’s marriage-recognition law, which means the ruling has no impact on private employers and no applicability at all other than the provision of employee benefits to the state’s public workforce.”

Barnes further explained that, as it did in a 2006 ruling, the court left it to the state Legislature to define marriage in New York.

Said Barnes, “In its decision yesterday, the court expressed hope that ‘the Legislature will address this controversy.’ This is a curious statement in that, as this very court made clear in the 2006 case, state law prohibits same-sex ‘marriage.’ Therefore, the Legislature is addressing it by its inaction to change it. If it is the will of the Legislature not to redefine marriage, there is no action necessary; it is already the law of the state.”

Consequently, the conference said the rulings “are characterized as a defeat because they (activists) were hoping for a much broader ruling.”