It's a good news/bad news kinda thing.
The New Jersey Legislature voted this evening to allow civil unions between same-sex couples, quickly settling an emotionally fraught issue but frustrating advocates on both sides....The civil union law was written under pressure, in response to a directive by the State Supreme Court seven weeks ago to assure that gay and lesbian couples are guaranteed the same rights and benefits as married heterosexual couples.
The court left it to the Legislature to decide whether gay couples should be allowed to marry or placed on a separate, parallel track. Both houses settled on the civil union route, sending it through in just 10 days from introduction to voting.
So no marriage, but thankfully Republicans failed in their attempts to amend the legislation to define marriage as strictly hetero--that means a marriage bill could be brought forward in the future.
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IMO, the problem is that people don't understand. They think that civil unions are just marriage by another name.
Hi, I've never posted on here before, but I've been a daily reader for the last couple of months. I'd like to add in my two sense about the decision made by the NJ court, as well as the legislation. Everyone keeps saying that the court backed down in order to let the legislature decide what could happen between two people of the same sex. This is not true. The court decided (in a 4-3 decision mind you) that it was not the authority of the court to decide what the legal binding of two people together should be called, whether it be marriage or something else. Not that they didn't believe that gay people di d not deserve the right to marry. The court said that they cannot say at this point in time -- because NJ has no civil union laws -- that civil unions are inheriently unequal. And yes this is what people are getting upset over, obviously they are unequal in the places in which they exist, but the NJ court should not be using that information, because as I said before, NJ didn't have any type of civil unions, so there was nothing for the court to go on. The court decision was written very well. I think it was one of the better court decisions that I have ever read, and the implications that they place into this decision are going to be incredible, both statewide, and hopefully nationally. The court said that gay people who are in a legally committed relationships, have to be given every right that married people are given. It is my firm belief that as soon as this law goes through, and people are allowed to file for civil unions, they will also file for another day in court, because the court, seeing in NJ that there is not equality, will then have to rule that marriage is the only thing that will allow gay people to access the same rights as people who are currently given the right to marry. Because as we know, "seperate but equal is inheirently unequal".