Observations by my friend, Ed Finley:

1. bad judicial temperment. what a pity that the court dismissed out-of-hand the possibility of construing the domestic relations law to admit the possibility of same-gender marriages. this could have given the political branches the chance to debate the point and, perhaps, amend the domestic relations law to be clear . . . either way.
2. conclusory analysis of the right at stake. the court's analysis of whether the right at issue is a "fundamental right" (and therefore the law subject to strict scrutiny) is preposterous. the court assumes its own conclusion when it says that it is rational to frame the right at issue as the right of same-gender couples to marry and not simply the right to marry. how can the right to intimacy (the frame of Lawrence v. Texas) be any different than the right to marry?
3. dishonest reasoning of the person aggrieved. as ridiculous as it sounds, the court says that gender discrimination is not at issue in a law prohibiting same-gender marriage. they do so first by saying that the state may make legal distinctions between the genders where there is a relevant "distinguishing characteristic". the genders, per se, do not have relevant "distinguishing characteristics": two women, for example, lack no "distinguishing characteristics" to procreate; and a single man lacks no "distinguishing characteristic" to raise a family. the court explains this away basically by morphing the category from gender into "opposite-sex couples." but "couples" don't have a gender and could therefore never be the object of gender discrimination. each member of the couple is of a gender and can claim gender discrimination in the state's treatment of their rights in an intimate relationship. the court's reasoning is just dishonest.

the majority basically makes a naked political choice and fits its reasoning to justify the conclusion.

chief judge kaye's dissent is more than a political objection to the court's conclusions: it is a supremely well-reasoned and honest analysis of the law.

1. whether the statute could be construed to permit same-gender marriage.
"The court has, properly, construed the statutory scheme as prohibiting same-sex marriage. . . . This Court cannot avoid its obligation to remedy constitutional violations in the hope that the Legislature might some day render the question presented academic."
2. analysis of the right at stake. "Simply put, fundamental rights are fundamental rights. They are not defined in terms of who is entitled to exercise them."
3. analysis of the person aggrieved. "The right to marry is the right of individuals, not of . . . groups."

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