Not surprisingly, Pataki became the first Republican to be endorsed by Empire State Pride for a statewide office when he ran for reelection in 2002. Shortly after his reelection, the state senate finally approved the anti-discrimination bill, and Pataki signed it into law the very day it passed. Thirty-one years after an anti-discrimination bill was first proposed, New York became the thirteenth state to prohibit discrimination against gay men and lesbians in employment and public services.

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However, passage of SONDA (the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Act) was not without controversy. The failure of the bill to include gender identity as a protected class led to a bitter rift between the Pride Agenda executive director Matt Foreman, who served from 1997 until 2003 when he left to head the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and state senator Duane, who accused the Pride Agenda of marginalizing people.

In response, Foreman contended that including gender identity in the bill would doom it to yet another rejection and pledged to increase the Pride Agenda's efforts on behalf of the transgendered.

If the passage into law of SONDA is the Pride Agenda's most visible statewide accomplishment, the organization also deserves credit for numerous other achievements at both state and local levels, including New York City's domestic partner legislation (1998) and anti-discrimination laws even in such conservative areas of the state as Westchester County (1999) and Nassau County (2000). Pride Agenda also lobbied successfully for the inclusion of gender identity in the anti-discrimination laws passed by the city of Rochester (2001) and New York City (2002).

The Pride Agenda was also influential in the election of such openly gay politicians as Christine Quinn to the New York City Council in 1999 and Danny O'Donnell to the New York state assembly in 2002. Quinn was chosen Council Speaker in 2006, making her one of the most prominent openly lesbian elected officials in the country.

Much of the Pride Agenda's focus in recent years has been on achieving equality for glbtq families. To that end, it lobbied the New York City Council to pass the Equal Benefits Bill in 2004. When the bill, which requires city contractors to provide domestic partners the same benefits they give to spouses of employees, was vetoed by Mayor Bloomberg, the Council overrode his veto by a vote of 41 to 4.

The Pride Agenda has also won passage of a number of statewide measures, including a law guaranteeing same-sex domestic partners the same rights as spouses and next of kin when taking care of loved ones in hospitals and nursing homes and a law granting domestic partners the same priority as spouses in making decisions about burial of a loved one.

The Pride Agenda has been successful in defeating efforts by some members of the New York legislature to pass a Defense of Marriage Act, and it has persuaded several state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, such as Massachusetts and Canada, as valid in New York.

When New York's highest court disappointingly ruled in 2006 that there was no constitutional mandate to provide same-sex couples access to marriage, the Pride Agenda mobilized thousands to protest the ruling at seven rallies across the state and officially began a campaign to achieve marriage equality in New York.

Since 2003, Alan Van Capelle has served as Executive Director of Empire State Pride Agenda and Empire State Pride Agenda Foundation. The youthful Van Capelle created a stir in 2006 when he criticized Senator Hillary Clinton and other Democrats for their failure to support same-sex marriage.

Anti-discrimination statutes and ordinances have made a real difference in the lives of millions of glbtq individuals.

"Domestic partnership" is the generic term for a variety of forms of legal and institutional recognition of same-sex couples that fall short of same-sex marriage.

In the United States, glbtq candidates have achieved some significant successes at the ballot box in the last three decades, running for and winning local, state, and national elections.

Hate Crimes are crimes towards persons or groups motivated by the victim's race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, and gender identity.

Off and on over two centuries, New York City has also reigned as the capital of homosexual, transgender, and queer life in America.

Political scientists have generated insights important to the study of sexuality through research into glbtq participation in formal politics, studies of sexuality as a category of power, and reconceptualizations of the relationship between sexuality and politics.

Lesbian and gay couples have been fighting for the freedom to marry since the dawn of the modern glbtq struggle for equality; despite some success abroad, progress toward same-sex marriage in the United States has been slow.

Sodomy laws, which provided the legal basis for police harassment of sexual minorities, were conclusively overturned by the United States Supreme Court in 2003, after more than half a century of efforts at reform.

Although work remains to be done, the expansion of protection from workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation stands as one of the significant accomplishments of the American lesbian and gay civil rights movement.

Using bold images and confrontational tactics, ACT UP worked to promote awareness of AIDS and challenge the complacency of politicians and government officials in the early years of the epidemic.

Equality California (EQCA) is one of the largest and fastest growing statewide glbtq advocacy and civil rights organizations in the United States.

The largest glbtq political organization in the United States, the Human Rights Campaign has emerged as the leading national organization representing glbtq concerns.

The oldest continuously operating national glbtq interest group, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has played a significant role in the development of the glbtq movement for equal rights.

The short-lived militant group Queer Nation, which emerged in 1990, made a lasting impact on sexual identity politics in the United States.