As the effort to pass same-sex marriage in the Senate remains gridlocked, Gov. Andrew Cuomo met privately with three Republican lawmakers this evening: Sens. Kemp Hannon, Steve Saland and Andrew Lanza.

Hannon, who was originally considered undecided vote until, has said he’s a firm no vote on the measure. Saland, a Poughkeepsie lawmaker, won’t say how he’ll vote.

Both Hannon and Saland wouldn’t speak to reporters after meeting with Cuomo.

But Lanza said the discussion with the governor concerned developing broader religious exemptions. And he suggested that research was being done into tweaking some of the language in the bill.

“We are talking in broad strokes right now, so there’s no specific language,” he said. “We just want to go over the case law.”

Still, he refused to say if the governor would be interested in changing the bill’s language.

“We talked about the concepts and the subject,” Lanza said. “There’s no middle ground, we want to get it right,” he added.

Lanza said that the exemptions were a “line in the sand” on whether he would vote for the bill.

Another publicly undecided Republican, Sen. Greg Ball of the Hudson Valley, has also said broader protections for religious institutions are needed.

Supporters of the governor’s bill have argued that current exemptions already exist in the human rights law.

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