Maya Angelou, Cynthia Nixon Phoning NY Pols on Gay Marriage

"Helloooo, this is Dr. Maya Angelou calling. Tell me something: Would you deny your son or your daughter the ecstasy of finding someone to love?" This was the question posed by the Pulitzer prize-winning poet over the phone to State Senator Shirley Huntley, a Queens Democrat who opposes same-sex marriage. It wasn't a pre-recorded robocall; it was actually Angelou, and at first Huntley thought it was a joke, telling the Times, "I said, ‘What?’ I heard the voice, and I said: ‘My God. It is her.’ And that was that."

But by 'that was that,' she doesn't mean Angelou changed her mind. The impassioned phone call failed to shake Huntley's commitment to defend the rights of straight people who believe marriage means a man and a woman (and not man and muppet, either). Angelou was also on the horn to two other State Senators this week, as part of a push to get a same-sex marriage bill passed in New York before the Legislature's summer recess. And she wasn't alone: Cynthia Nixon, co-star of "Sex and the City," and Paul Tagliabue, the former NFL commissioner and father of a gay son, also personally called politicians. Check and mate, NOM. Start shopping for wedding attire, gay lovers!

Of course, the president of the National Organization for Marriage (or should we say "Marraige"?) sneers, "We think the most effective lobbyists on marriage are actual constituents, not Hollywood stars," who can no longer be "actual constituents" once they're famous—that's the law! But nobodies like us can still participate, and the group New Yorkers for Marriage Equality has a one-stop website that makes it unbelievably easy to track down your state representatives and give them your best Maya Angelou impression.