The same-sex
marriage issue in New Jersey is moving from a legal dispute
to a political one. The state supreme court on Wednesday
ruled that New Jersey must extend all the rights of
marriage to gay couples. But the justices left it to
state lawmakers to decide whether to provide those
rights in the form of marriages, civil unions, or something
else, giving the legislature 180 days to reach a decision.
Several Democratic lawmakers said they will push
for full marriage rights. But some Republicans, the
minority party in both houses of the legislature, said
they will seek a constitutional amendment banning
same-sex marriage. Rrepublican assemblyman Richard Merkt
vowed to have the justices impeached.
''Neither the framers of New Jersey's 1947
constitution, nor the voters who ratified it, ever
remotely contemplated the possibility of same-sex
marriage,'' Merkt said.
State senate president Richard J. Codey and
assembly speaker Joseph Roberts Jr. pledged in a joint
statement to block any proposed amendments
prohibiting marriage equality. They also
complained that the court-imposed deadline allows too little
time to define the type of union that would be granted
to gay couples.
The New Jersey supreme court ruling is similar
to the 1999 high court ruling in Vermont that led that
state to create civil unions, which confer all of the
rights and benefits available to married couples under
state law.
''Although we cannot find that a fundamental
right to same-sex marriage exists in this state, the
unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to
committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under
our state constitution,'' Justice Barry T. Albin wrote
for New Jersey's four-member majority.
The court said the legislature ''must either
amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex
couples or create a parallel statutory structure''
that gives gay couples all the privileges and obligations
afforded to married couples. The three dissenters,
including Chief Justice Deborah Poritz, argued that
the majority did not go far enough: They demanded gay
couples be given the right to marry.
National gay rights advocates embraced the
ruling. Lara Schwartz, legal director of the Human
Rights Campaign, said if legislators have to choose
between civil unions and marriage, it is a no-lose situation
for gay couples. ''They get to decide whether it's
chocolate or double chocolate chip,'' she said.
But the leader of Garden State Equality, New
Jersey's most influential gay rights group, said the
ruling falls short of the organization's desired goal
of the right to marriage. ''We get to go from the back of
the bus to the middle of the bus,'' chairman Steven
Goldstein said.
Cindy Meneghin, who with her partner joined
other couples in suing the state for the right to
marry, said during a news conference in Newark that
the court's ruling left her ''feeling butterflies.'' She
said her thoughts turned to the day in a Catholic high
school gym when she first saw her partner of more than
30 years.
''Will you, Maureen Kilian, marry me?'' Meneghin
tearfully said to her partner.
''Yes, if the legislature lets us,'' Kilian responded.
New Jersey adopted a domestic-partnership law in
2004 giving gay couples some of the same rights of
married couples, but the same-sex marriage debate has
never played out fully in the statehouse in Trenton. It
might have, had former governor James E. McGreevey,
who resigned in 2004 after announcing he'd had an
affair with a male staff member, made it a priority.
He has said he did not support same-sex marriage at the time
because he was afraid of being perceived as gay.
''I applaud the court's courage,'' McGreevey
said Wednesday. ''I regret not having had the
fortitude to embrace this right during my tenure as
governor.'' (Geoff Mulvihill, AP)
