Denying marriage equality denies gays and lesbians their constitutional rights
By Hank Kalet, Managing Editor
The authors of the state Constitution may not have considered the idea of same-sex marriage when they drafted it in 1947, but they certainly left the door wide open for its consideration.
The document opens with a fairly sweeping declaration of rights, one guaranteeing everyone is “by nature free and independent,” that we all “have certain natural and unalienable rights” that include “pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness.”
The right to pursue happiness — all sitcom jokes aside, isn’t that what we’re fighting about on the marriage-equality issue?
”I would love to see my brother able to get married,” Karen Woodmansee, of Hillsborough, wrote in a letter to the state Legislature last week.
Ms. Woodmansee was one of about two dozen Somerset and Hunterdon counties residents to attend a meeting sponsored by Garden State Equality at Temple Beth El, on Route 206 in Hillsborough on Nov. 4.
”I want him to be able to experience what everyone else gets to experience,” she wrote. “And I want my children to live in a state that recognizes marriage equality.”
The meeting (covered by Packet Group reporter Audrey Levine, who provides quotations for this column) was part of a larger series of house parties and mini-rallies sponsored by the marriage-equality group to try and push the state Legislature to enact legislation sponsored by Democrats Loretta Weinberg and Raymond Lesniak in the state Senate and Democrats Reed Gusciora, Valerie Vainieri Huttle, John McKeon and Mila Jasey in the Assembly that would define marriage in New Jersey as “ the legally recognized union of two consenting persons in a committed relationship.”
The law would contain a religious exception exempting clergy members and religious institutions from being required to “solemnize” marriages. Gov. Jon Corzine has said he would sign marriage equality legislation while Gov.-elect Chris Christie said during the campaign that he would veto it, adding a layer of urgency to the issue than had existed before last week.
”It is time to get that bill across Gov. Corzine’s desk,” said Sara Beth Joren, director of special projects for Garden State Equality. “We will wait four, if not eight, years if we don’t get the bill in in the next few weeks.”
Assemblyman Gusciora, who represents most of Mercer County, called the legislation an “issue of fairness.”
”Marriage is a civil institution conferred by the government,” he told me Monday. “If it was strictly a religious issue, then you would go to church and that would be it.”
It isn’t strictly a religious issue, of course. The state and federal government recognize a variety of marriage arrangements that contradict religious teachings, including those of mixed faiths, purely civil marriages and the like. I’ve been married 20 years, a fact recognized by the state and federal governments, even though ours is an interfaith marriage — Annie is Catholic, and I’m Jewish.
My wife and I file joint tax returns and carry joint insurance policies on our home and car. We cannot be made to testify against each other in court and have next-of-kin status for an array of situations (hospital visits, medical decisions, inheritance, Social Security and property ownership).
Our marriage, however, sanctioned by the Catholic Church or permitted under traditional Judaic rules, even though my wife is a baptized Catholic who went to Catholic school, received communion and was confirmed, and I have been bar mitzvahed.
And that’s fine. The question of where the Catholic Church stands on same-sex marriage is one that must be answered by the church and its adherents; how the Catholic community answers the question, however, should not be imposed on non-Catholics.
That’s the point of the so-called “establishment clause” of the First Amendment — “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” — which the First Amendment Center of the Freedom Forum in Washington calls “absolute.”
”It allows no law,” the center says on its Web site, which means it “forbids more than the establishment of religion by the government,” but also “laws respecting an establishment of religion.” (Emphasis in original.)
”The establishment clause,” the center says, “sets up a line of demarcation between the functions and operations of the institutions of religion and government in our society.”
Emory University law professor John Witte Jr., writing on the First Amendment Center site, said the amendment is both proscriptive (meaning it prevents the government from imposing on religion) and prescriptive (meaning it prevents the government from imposing a religion on citizens).
State and federal prohibitions against same-sex marriage, to my way of thinking, are both proscriptive and prescriptive and, therefore, violate the First Amendment. They are proscriptive in that they usurp the authority of denominations that support same-sex marriage, like the Lutheran Church, to marry same-sex couples. They are prescriptive in that they impose a religious definition of marriage — and one not endorsed by all religious denominations — on everyone, regardless of their religious beliefs.
Mr. Gusciora’s bill addressed both of these issues, giving gay couples the right to marry but protecting religious communities and clergy members who have religious objections. There is no reason that it shouldn’t pass.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. E-mail, hkalet@centraljersey.comwww.kaletblog.comtwitter.com/newspoet41facebook.com/hank.kalet.