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Loading ...Gays vow fight as NJ same-sex marriage bill fails
01.08.2010 8:14am EST
(Trenton, NJ) Marriage equality activists are vowing to fight back through the courts after the state Senate voted down a bill to legalize same-sex marriage.
Minutes after the bill was defeated 20-14 on Thursday, gay rights advocates announced they would file a lawsuit seeking to get the state’s top court to order New Jersey to recognize same-sex matrimony.The state Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the state must provide all the benefits of marriage to committed gay couples. In response, the Legislature legalized civil unions for gay couples.
The Senate vote also was the latest setback for gay rights supporters nationally. In November, Maine voters overturned a law that would have allowed gay marriage in that state. The law never went into effect. And last month, the state Senate in New York defeated a similar law. In California, a federal trial will begin next week on that state’s gay marriage ban.
Only five states – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont – recognize gay marriage.
Gay rights advocates had pushed hard to get the New Jersey measure passed before Jan. 19, when Republican Chris Christie becomes governor. Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine had promised to sign the bill if approved by the Legislature, but Christie said he would veto it.
On Tuesday, Sen. President Richard Codey agreed to put the bill to a vote, leaving little mystery about its fate. Only one Republican, Sen. Bill Baroni, of Hamilton, was among the 14 senators who voted for the bill. The measure needed 21 votes to pass.
“We should not be telling one couple you can be married and another couple you can be civil unionized,” Baroni said. “We are better than that. History is watching us now. She is asking us whether we’ll side with equality and right – or for discrimination.”
Those on the other side said changing the centuries-old definition of marriage was too drastic a move for lawmakers to make. Opponents want to put the measure to a popular vote.
“Suddenly, today, there’s implications that you’re discriminating against folks when you want to maintain that definition,” said Sen. Michael Doherty, a Republican from Washington Township in Warren County.
As vigorous as the debate became, most senators who were thought to be on the fence in the preceding weeks did not chime in. Five senators did not cast votes.
Among the abstainers was Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat from Gloucester County’s Washington Township who is expected to become Senate president when the Legislature reorganizes Tuesday. Sweeney did not return calls for comment.
Gay couples say civil unions don’t work largely because employees at hospitals, insurance companies and elsewhere don’t understand the concept. Gay rights groups said Thursday they would use statements made by senators to support their arguments in their lawsuit.
Steven Goldstein, chairman of the gay rights group Garden State Equality, said acknowledgment that civil unions haven’t worked should be enough to persuade the court to mandate gay marriage.
“Suddenly, today, there’s implications that you’re discriminating against folks when you want to maintain that definition”
There was a centuries-old definition of women as ‘property’ and ‘baby factory’ and a centuries-old definition of Black people as ’slaves’ too. Oh, and let’s not forget the centuries-old definitions of Jews, Catholics (among Protestants), Protestants (among Catholics), etc.
The fact that a definition has been the same for any length of time does not mean it is not discriminatory.
No gay marriage.
Not here anyway.
Gay marriage everywhere but here.
Why do I have a feeling Uganda will legalize gay marriage before we do?
Why doesn’t the American Taliban start blowing up statues like the Taliban did?
We’re becoming more and more like the middle east every day.
just the AP piece, I’ll look at others, but this doesn’t frame it strongly enough.
It refers to the court ruling, but I’d like to see readers of national news outlets truly understand the issue in NJ as it is very different.
The senators were not voting on simply marriage equality, i.e. did they believe their constituents deserved equality. They were voting in response to a court order. I know, they disagree that the court order and the results of civil unions may not require marriage, but the facts are plain to see.
Dereliction of duty. If they cannot do their job and enact laws to meet requirements laid out by the highest court, NJ voters should find lawmakers willing to.
There has always been a power play between legislative and judicial branches in most governments and this has to be at play here in my opinion.
It is a totally different situation than in other states. When a senator says let the people vote a reporter should counter if the senator is aware of the court order, because it seems he is ignoring it.
Details in this struggle are very important as our opposition is lying to and confusing people. Let’s try to get that word out..the court has ruled and the senate has failed its citizens.
Hmmm.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/01/nj_gay_marriage_how_lawmakers.html
I’d like to point out that if six of the democrats who voted aginst same-sex marriage had voted for it, it would have PASSED 20-14.
I consider myself clearly and distinctly homosexual. I maintain little sympathy for “gays” who continue to throw money and support at the Democratic party, defeat after defeat, out of some cult-driven notion that the alternative would be to suffer Republican legislation (rather than actually fight WITHOUT pansy lawyers).
“Gays” who continue to blindly support the Democratic Party are not in fact homosexual.
They are autosexual.
They enjoy fucking themselves.
There is a mistake in wording. “Only five states – Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont – recognize gay marriage.” New York does recognize it, too. It’s just not performed there.
The trend toward recognition of gay rights seems to have reversed of late. I attribute it to the historical perspective that as a country is “threatened” from without, whether real or manufactured as a political tool, the center moves right and the “conservative hate mongers” prevail until the external threat is no longer perceived to exist and then the pendulum swings the other way and that is when liberals get a chance to act legislatively.
Lyndon Johnson’s implementation of John Kennedy’s civil rights agenda was enacted during the Vietnam War years, but that may well have been because the citizens of the U.S. didn’t perceive that war as a threat to the U.S.
FAcebook user,
What you talking about? African culture is vehemently antigay far more than in the USA. Why the American whatever don’t blow up statues? We have the rule of law, something they didn’t have to stop them.
The fact they we have 5 marriage equality states, and they have 0 anywhere in all of Asia let alone the middle east proves we are not quite like the Middle East. Another way we are not like the Middle East is that in Iran gays must either undergo an unwanted gender reassignment surgery and thus love the members of the same gender in a
heterosexual way or face the possibility of loneliness for the rest of their days. Since a gay couple as we know it in the USA, anatomically intact and all can earn you a death sentence in that country. In Iraq, militias hunt for gays to murder on the spot. In Turkey which has a part of its territory in Europe and a part in Asia and wants European Union membership thus officially bringing Europe to the Iraqi and the Iranian borders, being gay is legal with gay bars, etc. Being gay is tolerated sort of, and not well understood but gay organizations are not tolerated and ones like the Turkish gay organization Kaos, have to fight for the right to exist. The European Union is not anxious for Turkey as a member until it modernizes some more its attitudes toward gays etc. It needs to admit its antiArmenian massacre of a million some people in the early 20th century. Something it won’t. Unlike Germany, which openly admitted its part in the extermination of some 6 million European Jews and which today wants that to never happen again.
Back to gays in the Middle East. I have a gay Turkish male friend through an internet website for knitting. He lives his life as a gay man in Istanbul, TR without fear. He is awaiting the return to Turkey of his Croatian boyfriend from Croatia. That would not be possible in Iran and Iraq. There is a gay organization in Lebanon called Helem which is working to make life better for Lebanese gays. Being gay may be legal in Lebanon and Jordan but not true of the rest of the Arab world. Being gay is legal in Israel and gay relationships are recognized there (unlike the rest of the Middle East) Tel Aviv, I read is likely the best place in Israel to be gay.
The Muslim majority countries where being gay is legal are in Eurppe: Albania. Turkey, Azerbaijan (with a language related to Turkish and a classical music style related to that of Iran).
In the Middle East: Israel, Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey (since part of Turkey is in Europe and the rest of it in Asia)
Some regard mostly Christian Armenia as almost Middle Eastern as its music and cuisine are similar to that of Turkey and Azerbaijan is very Middle Eastern whereas mostly Christian Georgia is more European and more Western in its political style and culture than its neighbors even though like Greece, influenced in music and cuisine by the Middle East. Being gay is legal in all three large Caucasus republics between Turkey and Iran with being gay the best in Georgia. Even though gay life in Georgia is legal, the scene there is small compared to more advance European countries.
So, in the world of the Middle East and in the areas bordering on the Middle East being gay is not as neatly pigeon-holed as you would have it. Same as in the USA.
Maryland where I live is edging closer to becoming one day a civil union (our current governor is pro civil union, the one before him was never even that liberal) state and eventually a marriage equality state. Equality Maryland is working hard toward that goal and has gone to court to get that passed in 2007 and even though it lost the case is still fighting hard for that cause.
And just because 45 states don’t recognize doesn’t mean that as time goes on more and more young Americans who are the future of USA do recognize marriage equality.
NY does reoognize it from other states and so does Rhode Island while neither state has its own yet. Maryland’s attorney general Gansler is exploring right now the possibility of Maryland (MD) becoming a state that does recognize the gay marriage legal in other states and countries even though it doesn’t have its own yet. He hopes even though he is straight that Maryland will one day legalize its own marriage equality. Every year in February, Equality Maryland members take the marriage cause to as many state legislators in Annapolis as their constituents as they can. Meets with their representatives from their home districts in person and lobbies them for this cause. All of my local representatives in Annapolis are either pro-gay or gay and all in favor of MD marriage equality for MD.
I don’t see a whole lot of that going on in the Middle East.
Rhode Island is losing its antigay gov in 2011 because of RI term limits on their governors. All of the current Dem candidates are pro-gay marriage. And one of those candidate could possibly be the openly gay mayor of Providence, RI’s capital city.
The number of openly gay candidates for public office throughout the USA grows every year and more and more of them are winning their office inspite of lies spread about them in some places. Don’t see a whole of that in the Middle East or we would have heard about it.
sure, currently only 5 marriage equality states in the USA. But again, how many marriage equality countries are there in the Middle East? 0.
Inspite of the crazies ravaging Maine and holding back NJ, CA, etc. this land is far ahead of where it was 20 years ago.
“And Steven Goldman, acknowledgment that gay civil unions have not worked is simply an acknowledgment that gay marriage will not work. Fact not opinion.”
Um – dimwit – the REASON he feels they have not ‘worked’ is because they are NOT LEGALLY EQUIVALENT TO MARRIAGE.
Geeze – are you really this dense? Or were you, perhaps, homeschooled in the South?
Mr. Formaini, what you have communicated is opinion and arguably might dictate that you were home schooled.
You seem to suggest that home schooled students are less educated and prepared for college, than public school students, which is not only opinion but false.
Try not to substitute weak debating skills with personal attacks.
To suggest that gay civil unions are not equivalent to marriage, suggest that they are not marriages and not designed or intended to be equivalent. However, they are intended to be civil unions, so in the ocntext of civil unions, it can only be compared to straight civil unions, and determined to not work or FAIL comparatively.
In the Netherlands, where they have same-sex marriages, they have been studied and determined to fail compared to straight marriages.
Thanks to Sen. Bill Baroni for standing up for us!!