The Boston Globe has some advice for the New Jersey Legislature — advice it should take as it now takes up the issue of marriage equality. In an editorial today, it recommends that the state look to Massachusetts’ experience, which has been uneventful, to understand how little impact the Massachusetts’ court had on heterosexuals.
The state’s four candidates for governor have different positions on the issue, but none “has brought the issue to the forefront in a campaign that has seen spirited differences of opinion” on other issues, the paper said.
One reason is that any opposition to gay marriage would likely be based simply on a candidate’s belief that it breaks with the traditional model and not on any evidence that it has had a harmful effect on gay spouses, the children that many of them are raising, or anyone else. There is no such evidence.
There also appears to have been little, if any, political fallout from the deicision, the paper said.
Although Massachusetts legislators have had occasion to vote on the issue, not one has been turned out of office for favoring gay marriage. So at least in this state you can add elected politicians to the long roster of those who have suffered no harm because the SJC decided gays had the same right to marriage as heterosexuals.
Not sure where the Legislature is likely to come down on this, but at least the court has ruled rather definitively that gays and lesbians are entitled to the same rights as the rest of us.
I suspect that the Legislature will try to punt on the issue — though there are a few Republicans calling for a constitutional change to overrule the court (and one, quoted by The Star-Ledger, calling for impeachment of the judges).
That said, I think there are two ways the Legislature should go — as opposed to the path they actually will choose:
1. They can expand the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples. This would grant full equality under the law, removing the stigma that would ensue from creating an entirely new category for gay couples.
Or
2. Eliminate the word marriage from the law, enact civil union legislation that would cover a variety of family arrangements and leave it up to the individual couples (and their families, religious institutions, etc.) to determine what each relationship should be called. This makes the most sense to me — it honors the separation of church and state and gets the government out of the personal relationship business.
But I’d endorse either approach, so long as the current discriminatory set-up is ended along with the double standard the court seemed ready to endorse.
South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
Hank Kalet 