Again, your conclusions simply tell us what we already know – a separate form of marriage for gay people is a form of segregation, and segregation is a blatant form of discrimination, which is bad for everyone.

I’m grateful for the report, but it doesn’t tell the LGBT Community anything they didn’t already know, and it shouldn’t be news to anyone with half a brain. Even the religious right should know this already – whether or not they care is another matter entirely.

“We were not mandated to evaluate and respond to all of the things that stigmatize the LGBT community, just this one area of inequality.”

And you are right. If the State says, “your relationship is legitimate and so you can legally marry”, it will go some way towards reducing that stigma. However, while it will be a massive leap forward in gay rights, it will be a small step forward in reducing the stigma associated with both homosexuality and having homosexual parents.

While my comments before may have seemed flippant, I genuinely do appreciate this report and I hope that the right people read it. What surprises me is that anyone would need a report like this to tell them what’s bloody obvious to anyone who opened their eyes.

Then you must not have read through the report, otherwise you would not have missed our conclusion (pg 45): (1) The Legislature and Governor amend the law to allow same sex couples to marry; (2) The law be enacted expeditiously because any delay in marriage equality will harm all the people of New Jersey…

You probably also missed these same statements on page 2, or that the Commission voted unanimously to support these conclusions.

You also wrote:
>> Children of same-sex relationships do not face
>> continued stigma because their parents can’t legally
>> marry – they face continued stigma because their
>> parents are gay and they live in a society that seems, at
>> the moment, to pride itself on its intolerance.

Can’t say I disagree with your statement, but our Commission had a statutory mandate to study the effect of the civil union law versus the lack of full marriage equality on same-sex couples, their family, the State, etc. See pages 4-5, which sets out the requirements of our study.

We were not mandated to evaluate and respond to all of the things that stigmatize the LGBT community, just this one area of inequality.

While I am happy that there is an official report the gay community can reference when they state the bloody obvious, that’s all this report does – it tells us what we already know: creating a different type of “marriage” for gay couples doesn’t combat discrimination – it highlights it.

It’s no better than saying, “What – the black folk are thirsty? Well let’s let them have a drinking fountain that’s for them and them alone…and schools for them and them alone…”

Civil unions were not a step in the right direction. They were simply a base and insulting form of segregation.

I do have to take exception to this section of the report:

“As a result of the lack of marriage equality, both lesbian, gay and bisexual adolescents and children of same-sex relationships face continued stigma.”

Children of same-sex relationships do not face continued stigma because their parents can’t legally marry – they face continued stigma because their parents are gay and they live in a society that seems, at the moment, to pride itself on its intolerance.

Yes, marriage will be a step in the right direction to legitimise homosexual unions, but until schools are allowed to teach children about different lifestyles, to take steps to combat intolerance, to present a counter-argument to that of the religious right, the stigma will not only remain, it will grow.