Mayor Bloomberg with his chief policy adviser, John Feinblatt, at left, and consumer affairs commissioner, Jonathan Mintz, at right, with their children. The mayor is officiating at their wedding on the first day same-sex marriages can take place in New York. 
 
 Mayor Bloomberg will officiate at the wedding of two top city officials on July 24, the first day that New York's same-sex marriage law goes into effect, officials said Thursday. 
 
 The Democrat-turned-Republican-turned-independent mayor, who has performed marriage duty just twice since he took office in 2002, will marry his consumer affairs commissioner, Jonathan Mintz, and chief policy adviser, John Feinblatt. 
 
 The ceremony will take place at Gracie Mansion. 
 
 Bloomberg said in a statement that Mintz and Feinblatt, who have been together for many years, helped him "see the issue of marriage equality in very clear terms." 
 
 "This will be one of the biggest days of their lives, a day they've waited a long time to see, and I'm just honored to be a part of it," he said. 
 
 The city announced Wednesday it would extend the hours of the City Clerk's office to remain open that day, a Sunday, to accommodate same-sex couples wishing to marry on the historic day. 
 
 New York was the sixth state to legalize gay marriage. 
 
 The offices would normally be closed for the weekend. 
 
 "This is a historic moment for New York, a moment many couples have waited years and even decades to see – and we are not going to make them wait one day longer than they have to,” said Bloomberg. 
 
 The gay marriage bill was signed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo on June 24. The state is home to an estimated 42,000 same-sex couples. 
 
 On Tuesday, same-sex couples were officially able to begin applying for marriage licenses in New York. 
 
 Bloomberg previously officiated at the weddings of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and also his daughter. ||||| equal rites Bloomberg Will Be the First NYC Mayor to Preside Over a Gay Wedding 
 
 On July 24, the mayor will marry two of his top aides, John Feinblatt and Jonathan Mintz, who have been together for fourteen years and have two daughters. Bloomberg has presided over marriages only twice before as mayor, once for his daughter and once for Rudy Giuliani (who, by contrast, has ducked the requests of gay friends to marry them). [NYT] ||||| The weddings — businesslike ceremonies in fluorescent-lighted city offices for some, lavish catered affairs for others — represent the end of a political campaign that lasted for years. On June 24, the State Senate voted 33 to 29 to approve same-sex marriage, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed it into law that night. But the law did not take effect for 30 days, which is why Sunday is the first day that clerk’s offices were permitted to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. 
 
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 “As the hours tick by, we’re getting more and more excited,” Brian Banks, a 33-year-old middle-school special-education teacher from Albany, said on Friday after going to City Hall there to fill out paperwork. Mr. Banks planned to marry his partner of seven years, Jon Zehnder, 37, a high school math teacher, at the midnight ceremony in Albany on Sunday. “Even though we’ve always viewed ourselves as married, to have there be no asterisk next to it, it’ll just feel really good,” he said. 
 
 Not everyone will be celebrating. Town clerks in at least two rural communities have resigned in recent days, saying their religious convictions precluded them from marrying gay couples, and some cities will see public demonstrations on Sunday. The National Organization for Marriage is planning protests on Sunday afternoon at the State Capitol, outside Mr. Cuomo’s office in Midtown Manhattan and in the two largest cities upstate, Buffalo and Rochester. 
 
 But a sampling of pastors in the New York City area found that most did not intend to discuss same-sex marriage in their sermons on Sunday. At St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, for example, the homilist planned to speak on other subjects. “There may not be much more to say at this point,” Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said. 
 
 New York is the sixth, and largest, state to legalize same-sex marriage. Several other states are considering following suit, and on Sunday, some gay rights advocates plan to gather in Hoboken to call on New Jersey lawmakers to follow New York’s lead and allow gay couples to wed. But most states have either laws or constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage, and federal law bars the United States government from recognizing same-sex marriages. 
 
 “It’s a huge step forward, and yet it doesn’t erase the fact that there’s so many roadblocks facing advocates of marriage equality,” said George Chauncey, a historian at Yale and the author of “Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1940.” 
 
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 “Most of the time, an awful lot of the nation doesn’t want to be like New York at all,” Mr. Chauncey said. “I suspect that many people will take this as one more sign of what happens in the Northeast, and in New York in particular, that they don’t want to have happen in their own communities.” 
 
 Larry Kramer, the playwright and longtime gay rights advocate, said that as long as the federal government continued not to recognize same-sex marriages, the celebration in New York on Sunday would be misguided. 
 
 “These marriages, in whichever state, are what I call feel-good marriages,” Mr. Kramer said. “Compared to the benefits heterosexual marriages convey, gay marriages are an embarrassment — that we should accept so little, and with so much hoopla of excitement and self-congratulation.” 
 
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 But many people, both opposed to and in support of same-sex marriage, saw legalization in New York as a significant development, in part because of the size and visibility of the state, and in part because of its symbolism — the modern gay rights movement traces its symbolic emergence to the Stonewall uprising in New York City in 1969. 
 
 “New York really reflects and signifies that the center of gravity on this question has shifted,” said Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, which advocates for same-sex marriage. “It gives us tremendous momentum for continuing the journey the country has been on toward fairness.” 
 
 Whatever the historical implications — and however the push to legalize same-sex marriage fares in the other states where advocates plan to shift their focus — there will be no shortage of celebration, and protest, on Sunday and in the days to follow. 
 
 Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he would officiate at the wedding of two senior City Hall officials at a ceremony at Gracie Mansion, while Mr. Cuomo was to host a party for gay rights advocates and lawmakers at a hotel near the meatpacking district. 
 
 In Brooklyn, the borough president, Marty Markowitz, planned to open Borough Hall for a marathon series of weddings, complete with free cake and Champagne. 
 
 Outside the city clerk’s office in Lower Manhattan, rabbis from a synagogue in the West Village were scheduled to solemnize weddings under a rainbow-colored huppah, or Jewish wedding canopy. And two gay puppets, Rod and Ricky, from the Tony Award-winning musical “Avenue Q,” planned to show up outside the clerk’s office to stage a mock wedding as well. 
 
 There are also a variety of same-sex wedding celebrations, some with commercial or promotional overtones, on the agenda over the next days and months. 
 
 On Monday night, three gay couples will wed onstage at the St. James Theater after the evening’s performance of the Broadway musical “Hair.” On Saturday, two dozen couples will marry in two pop-up chapels that are to be installed in Central Park. And the Fire Island Pines resort is promoting three same-sex wedding packages, one featuring a private ferry ride “complete with your own crew of drag queens.”
– Michael Bloomberg isn’t wasting any time celebrating New York’s new marriage law. The day gay marriage becomes legal in the state, the mayor will officiate at the wedding of two city officials, NBC New York reports. Bloomberg will unite his chief policy adviser (John Feinblatt) and the city’s consumer affairs commissioner (Jonathan Mintz) in a ceremony at Gracie Mansion, the mayor’s official residence. The city clerk’s office would usually be closed on a Sunday, but it’s staying open for the big day on July 24. Bloomberg's decision contrasts with that of Rudy Giuliani, who has so far rebuffed requests from gay friends to preside over their nuptials in the city, notes the Daily Intel blog.