By Hank Kalet, Managing Editor
It is time for New Jersey to end the charade.
The state Legislature needs to acknowledge that New Jersey’s civil union law fails on the most basic of grounds: It tacitly accepts a separate-but-equal status for the state’s gay and lesbian couples by granting them most of the rights and benefits of marriage, but denying them the formal right to marry.
The latest reminder of the law’s inherent contradiction came last week when the California Supreme Court overturned that state’s gay-marriage ban, which called marriage “a basic civil right” that must be guaranteed “to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples.”
The 4-3 decision, issued May 15, has no legal force beyond California, but marriage-equality activists in New Jersey say the ruling will cast a long shadow and could help create the momentum necessary to expand the definition of marriage in New Jersey.
Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a North Jersey-based advocacy group, said California will have a “massive effect” because of the state’s size and cultural influence.
”What starts in California does not stay in California,” he said.
Garden State Equality is pushing for marriage equality in New Jersey by the end of the year and has been organizing “neighborhood action summits” (it held one in Princeton on May 13) to organize and encourage supporters.
Garden State Equality believes it is close to having enough votes in the state Legislature to pass legislation sponsored by Sens. Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, and Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, and co-sponsored by Sen. Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, that would change the definition of marriage to cover a “legally recognized union of two consenting persons in a committed relationship,” including same-sex couples. A similar marriage-equality bill has been introduced in the Assembly by Reed Gusciora, D-Mercer.
Sen. Weinberg said she also believes the California decision should help move New Jersey in the right direction.
”Needless to say, I’m happy,” she said Friday. “I’m happy for the residents of California, where a lot of my family live and who will now have more equal access to civil rights. And it will help us in New Jersey to pass our legislation.”
She said her legislation is undergoing some revisions, but she believes it is close to being passed in the Senate, though the tally “may be determined by the season in which it is posted” — i.e., whether a vote is scheduled before the November presidential election.
Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts, D-Camden, also is optimistic. He said on May 15 that it was “likely that New Jersey will ultimately be the first state to legislatively reach the inevitable conclusion that marriage is a right that should be enjoyed by all residents.”
The question is when — especially with Gov. Jon Corzine saying the issue should not be raised this year because of the presidential race. Given that he told legislators last year that the issue had to be put on the back burner because the full Legislature was on the ballot, one has to wonder what constitutes acceptable timing.
”Gov. Corzine has no reason to say do it later,” Mr. Goldstein says. “The California ruling on marriage equality has put this on the national right wing’s agenda, anyway, and California is going to be more of a focus of the national right wing than New Jersey would be. If we are ever to do it, now is the time. Now is the perfect time.”
The focus should be on the people affected, he says, and not on the politics. Civil unions, which were created in 2006 to address the state Supreme Court’s ruling that the state’s domestic partnership law was inadequate and that gay and lesbian couples were not being afforded equal rights and protections under state law, have been “the biggest civil rights failure in New Jersey history,” Mr. Goldstein said.
”Employers say that if the Legislature had intended to have civil unions be equal to marriage they would have called it marriage,” he said.
By not doing so, the state is making it easier for many companies — those covered by the federal Employment Retirement Income Security Act — to avoid recognizing same-sex couples and granting them financial or other benefits. According to the interim report of the state’s Civil Union Review Commission, issued in February, about half of New Jersey’s work force works for “self-insured companies” governed by ERISA and, by extension, the federal Defense of Marriage Act. That federal law defines marriage as between a man and a woman and essentially has allowed companies in New Jersey to opt out on civil unions and continue “to discriminate against same-sex couples.”
The commission found that ERISA has not been an issue in Massachusetts, where same-sex couples can marry, and that “recognition of marriage for same-sex couples in New Jersey could make a meaningful difference in the area of spousal benefits.”
”When there is no euphemistic term to hide behind,” said Mr. Goldstein, who was a member of the commission, “and a company wants to deny a same-sex couple benefits, then they have to admit that they are discriminating because the couple is gay.”
The report raised other concerns, including the impact that the uncertain status of civil union couples has on children and the uncertainty regarding health care and hospital settings, that it says could be addressed by defining these long-term relationships as what they are — marriages.
”People are suffering,” Mr. Goldstein said. “Justice delayed is justice denied. This is not just a political football. Our families are suffering. Some of them are living check to check because of the failure of the civil unions law. How can you look these couples in the eye and say it is a political issue.”
He’s right. It’s not about politics — or it shouldn’t be. It’s about fairness.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is hkalet@pacpub.com and his blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com.
