The decision is out. The state Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex couples have won all the rights and benefits of marriage, but it refused to answer the question of whether the word “marriage” should apply.
The key to the ruling is the court’s no-nonsense denunciation of discrimination. The court was pretty clear about the discrimination issue:
With this State’s legislative and judicial commitment to eradicating sexual orientation discrimination as our backdrop, we now hold that denying rights and benefits to committed same-sex couples that are statutorily given to their heterosexual counterparts violates the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1.
It went on to add:
The seeming ordinariness of plaintiffs’ lives is belied by the social indignities and economic ifficulties that they daily face due to the inferior legal standing of their relationships compared to that of married couples. Without the benefits of marriage, some plaintiffs have had to endure the expensive and time-consuming process of cross-adopting each other’s children and effectuating legal surname changes. Other plaintiffs have had to contend with economic disadvantages, such as paying excessive health insurance premiums because employers did not have to provide coverage to domestic partners, not having a right to “family leave” time, and suffering adverse inheritance tax consequences.
When some plaintiffs have been hospitalized, medical facilities have denied privileges to their partners customarily extended to family members. For example, when Cindy Meneghin contracted meningitis, the hospital’s medical staff at first ignored her pleas to allow her partner Maureen to accompany her to the emergency room. After Marcye Nicholson-McFadden gave birth to a son, a hospital nurse challenged the right of her partner Karen to be present in the newborn nursery to view their child. When Diane Marini received treatment for breast cancer, medical staff withheld information from her partner Marilyn “that would never be withheld from a spouse or even a more distant relative.” Finally, plaintiffs recount the indignities, embarrassment, and anguish that they as well as their children have suffered in attempting to explain their family status.
It has ordered that the state legislature remove all bars to benefits and has left it up to the Legislature as to what it should be called.
It is worth noting that, Chief Justice Deborah Poritz, a Whitman appointee, dissented saying that the court did not go far enough and that gay couples are not only due the rights and benefits of marriage, but are entitled to be married with sanction of the state.
The ruling, a good first step that protects same-sex couples, probably does not go far enough. But then, I’m not sure that we are asking the right questions. Perhaps, we should eliminate the legal definition of marriage altogether and leave that word for the religious institutions, open up our laws not only to heterosexual and gay couples, but to other family arrangements. We are living in a world of extended and unconventional families. Perhaps all the variations need to be recognized.
But that is a subject for another day.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 