New York, NY —

State Sen. Joseph Addabbo is defending his vote against gay marriage. The Queens Democrat, who represents Howard Beach, tells WNYC's Brian Lehrer he never made promises to gay rights advocates to suppport the legislation.

The freshman Democrat has been called a defector because he supported gay rights while on the City Council but then voted on Wednesday against a state bill to legalize same-sex marriage.

"I guess I would be a defector if, at some point, whether it be in my campaign last year or at any point this year I had said that yes, I was going to vote for the marriage equality bill. But at no point did I ever say yes," he told WNYC.

Addabbo says that he deliberately remained neutral on the issue of marriage equality, until he heard from his constituents, who he says were overwhelmingly opposed, based on calls to his office: "The 74 percent who said that they would not want their state senator to vote for this bill was a clear indication of where my district was on this issue."

Addabbo also denied that he influenced other senators who were on the fence, since he was the second member to vote in alphabetical order on Wednesday. He says it was clear to him from his conversations with his Democratic colleagues that the bill didn't have enough support to pass.