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10/27/2006
Jersey lawmakers seen leaning towards 'civil unions'; 2025 history books seen leaning towards 'They missed an opportunity to become civil rights heroes'
New Jersey's Star-Ledger newspaper is reporting that out of the 26 state senators they contacted yesterday to gauge their thoughts on the "civil unions" vs. "full marriage" question, 20 of them said they would oppose full marital access for gay an lesbian couples. Only 3 senators said they would do what's right and support the non-"separate but equal" form of matrimony.
That being the case, we now launch:
Because seriously, folks -- if the lawmakers decide to create a new system for us to obtain the court-prescribed equal rights, they are making a deliberate, heterosexist choice to keep gays on unequal footing. They would be telling the public that even when we are deemed worthy of equal rights, those rights should only be dispensed in ways that make it clear that we are somehow different from our heterosexual peers. They would be making us request a different sort of license from the civil employee who controls such things, and just the fact that we would have to utter the words "civil union permit" instead of "marriage license" would make us undeniably dissimilar from our straight friends!
The humane, decent, principled choice would be for the lawmakers to put political rhetoric and antiquated notions of family on hold, and actually consider the one sect of the population whose feelings go bizarrely unconsidered in debates like this: gay men and women! We, as a community, are CRAVING marriage rights! Even more than that, we are LONGING to have this "issue" behind us, so we can go about our lives focusing on societal matters that are truly important. All of the rhetoric from our opposition is based on fear and religious conviction, as they try and muddy the waters of the "issue" by presenting it as if it is somehow a threat to them. BUT WHAT ABOUT US!?!?!? The reality is that WE are the ones whose freedoms are threatened by lack of marital access, and whose very lives are threatened by the culture of homophobia! Why is our role in all of this so seriously downplayed?!?!
A separate "civil unions" system should seem pointless to anyone whose heart is truly free of homophobia or heterosexism. "Civil unions" only exist to appease those among us who truly DO NOT WANT a society free from gay bias. While our goal on the marriage "issue" is certainly equal recognition of our families, our goal for society is equal recognition of our lives as part of the spectrum of normalcy! The "Whites Only" fountain once dispensed the same water as the "Coloreds" one did; but the implications of having to walk the alternate line to obtain the H20 spoke volumes. While a separate civil unions system may not be quite as ugly as the brutal injustice that was racial segregation, the idea that one sect of the population must walk an alternate path in order to achieve the same objective is a notion that will always be wrong!
Jersey lawmakers: You have a chance to correct a wrong. The court ruled they were unable to grant full marriage not because they were against the idea, but because the law as it currently stands did not -- at least in the majority's interpretation -- specifically say they must. It is their job to interpret the law, and they interpreted it as saying "committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes." And while the court has given you the option of setting up a "parallel statutory structure, which will provide for, on equal terms, the rights and benefits enjoyed and burdens and obligations borne by married couples," it is only because they didn't view the Constitution as demanding "marriage" specifically that they made this stipulation. You guys and gals in the Assembly and Senate now have the opportunity to right the law by writing the law that keep future courts from having to make such a stipulation in their pro-fairness rulings!
Have the fortitude to support the form of unions that are truly "cvil" -- give us equal marriages!
Lawmakers cool to gay marriage [Star-Ledger]
*EARLIER: Jersey, the morning after [G-A-Y]
Technorati Tags: gay marriage, New Jersey
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