NEW YORK (AP) – Revelers at New York’s Pride parade, which takes over Fifth Avenue every June with a mix of politics and campy pageantry, had a new reason to celebrate last Sunday since the state Assembly passed a bill legalizing same-sex marriage.

”We are now more sure than ever that New York will do the equal and just thing,” said Cathy Marino-Thomas, co-executive director of Marriage Equality New York, a group that promotes the right to same-sex marriage.

The Democratic-controlled Assembly passed the same-sex marriage bill by 85-61 last Tuesday, June 19. Democratic Gov. Eliot Spitzer supports the bill but the Republican-led state Senate is not expected to act on it any time soon.

”We’re two-thirds of the way there in this state,” Marino-Thomas said.

Massachusetts is the only U.S. state that has legalized same-sex marriage so far.

New York’s Pride parade, one of dozens that take place annually around the world, commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising when patrons of a Greenwich Village gay bar resisted a police raid.

Dennis Spafford, a spokesperson for parade organizers Heritage of Pride, said he expected a million people including marchers and spectators this year.

But Heritage of Pride is smarting over the city’s rejection of its request to hold a street fair last Saturday on Eighth Avenue in Chelsea, which has the city’s heaviest concentration of gay-oriented businesses.

Pridefest, a street fair with hundreds of vendors, has been held in the West Village for the past 14 years immediately after the Sunday parade.