Hank Kalet

I received a call from the state office of the courts today, alerting me that the state Supreme Court is slated to rule tomorrow — Chief Justice Deborah Poritz’s final on the bench — on the long-awaited gay-marriage case.

And a Dayton couple (pictured) will be waiting with baited breath because their future could depend on it.

Here is what they told us earlier this year:

For 42-year-old Sarah and 46-year-old Suyin, marriage is as much about protecting their children as it is a symbol of their love and devotion.

“Your family is really the center of your existence,” Suyin said. “You work, you go to school, you’ve done all the right things. But there’s something else you can’t control.”

And that sums up pretty well what’s at stake for all gay couples in New Jersey.

Here is my column from February on the subject:

The state Supreme Court now has the chance to grant New Jersey’s gay and lesbian couples the rights they deserve.

The court heard arguments Wednesday on a case brought by seven couples — including Suyin and Sarah Lael of Dayton — challenging the state’s prohibition against gay marriage.

The five lesbian and two gay male couples who have brought the suit say the prohibition violates the state’s constitution and results in discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, in particular when it comes to health insurance, family leave and other perks that the married world takes for granted.

“For married couples,” writes Alfred P. Doblin, editorial page editor of the Herald News in Passaic County, “there is no fear that, after the death of a spouse, the
surviving partner would be denied Social Security benefits, pensions, access to health care coverage or saddled with estate taxes. For same-sex couples, there is no continuation of medical benefits, no Social Security, no guarantee of pensions, and, until recently, no assurance that a surviving partner could even have the final say on funeral arrangements.”

It is why the marriage issue has become so important in the gay community. It is a civil rights issue, a question of whether we as a society are willing to grant gay and lesbian couples full participation.

There are about 1,100 federal and state civil rights that go with being married; the legal construct controls issues ranging from inheritance, health insurance and Social Security to child-custody issues and end-of-life decisions.

And all of these — aside from about a dozen granted to gay lesbian couples under the state’s domestic partnership laws — are handed out based not on the notion of a committed relationship, but on what is an arbitrary and outdated religious definition.
“Our society and laws view marriage as something more than just state recognition of a committed relationship between two adults,” the state appellate court wrote last year in upholding the state’s gay marriage ban. “Our leading religions view marriage as a union of men and women recognized by God, and our society considers marriage between a man and woman to play a vital role in propagating the species and in providing the ideal environment for raising children.”

The assumption made by the court was that children are best served when they have two parents, one male and one female, and that other family constructs are inferior by their very nature.

While most would consider the proposition logical, the research is murky and all of us probably know at least one or two families that don’t fit the profile, but have healthy and well-adjusted children.

And there is something hypocritical in all of this, especially when you consider that my wife and I, who have chosen not to have children, are entitled to all the protection the law provides, while Suyin and Sarah Lael, who have adopted three daughters, are not.

The Laels have been together 15 years, own a home together and are raising a family. They’ve obviously made the kind of commitment that Annie and I have.
And yet, the state does not see it that way, and that is the rub.

Too much of the debate has centered on the notion of tradition, on how society and religion have historically viewed marriage. But religion and society have been wrong in the past — slavery, and later Jim Crow laws, standing as one of the most notable examples.

And tradition has a way of changing over time. Implicit in an earlier understanding of marriage, for instance, was the notion that the man was in charge and that a woman’s legal rights derived from her husband.

Our conception of family has changed, as well, in recent years growing to encompass single-parent families, so-called blended families and all manner of extended arrangements. That there is still resistance to granting gay and lesbian couples the same kind of rights the rest of us enjoy is shameful.

“Your family is really the center of your existence,” Suyin Lael told our reporter, Marisa Maldonado, this week. “You work, you go to school, you’ve done all the right things. But there’s something else you can’t control.”

And that is just plain wrong.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I think you’d have to go back a long, long way to find a South Brunswick municipal election as eventful as the one being waged this year.

I’m not talking about dirty campaigning or charges flying fast and furious, however. Rather, this year’s race has been turned upside down by a disgruntled Democrat.

Debra Johnson, who served on the Township Committe from 1995 to 1998 (with one year as mayor) and as the township’s first elected mayor from 1999 to 2002, attempted to take out incumbent Mayor Frank Gambatese with a primary challenge in June, coming closer than any Republican has to knocking off an incumbent Democrat in 13 years.

And now, as the campaign comes into its final stretch, with the Republicans putting up only token resistance (this is not an implied endorsement, just an observation about their campaign), Ms. Johnson suddenly finds herself in the middle of things again.

A group of her primary supporters is pushing a write-in campaign they hope will end with Ms. Johnson in office and the mayor contemplating retirement. Ms. Johnson says she has been drafted for the run and has not participated in the planning of the campaign. But she says she will serve if elected.

Signs — the ones used during her primary run, but with the words “write-in” affixed — have started cropping up around town and her supporters have placed a full-page ad in our paper.

Her presence in the race has turned it into a free-for-all. Ms. Johnson was a popular mayor and garnered significant support during the primary, especially from a number of voters in the East Villages area. (Many of them have been spoiling for a fight with the mayor since his initial support for a warehouse complex on the Van Dyke farm on Davidsons Mill Road. He has since backed away from the warehouses and has become an advocate for preserving as much of the property as possible.)

The write-in campaign creates several scenarios:

1. Ms. Johnson wins outright

2. Ms. Johnson steals enough votes from Mayor Gambatese to swing the votes to Republican Lynda Woods Cleary (this is based on voting trends from the last four elections)

3. Ms. Johnson’s campaign will have no impact.

I don’t want to prejudge this and I hate horse-race analogies, but money is money and write-ins are rarely successful — especially in an election in which 10,000 to 12,000 people are likely to vote.

But Ms. Johnson has made what has been a quiet race up until this point a bit more interesting than it otherwise would have been.

***

By the way, we will be doing a story on the write-in campaign this week, but we are not including Ms. Johnson in our five-part election issue series because she is not officially on the ballot.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

The South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press will not be endorsing for the U.S. House of Representatives (we never do). But I want to pass along the endorsement in the 12th District race from our sister paper, The Princeton Packet, because it pretty much sums up my thinking on the race:

Eight years ago, when Rush Holt was first elected to Congress, he was a wet-behind-the-ears scientist-turned-politician better known for his mastery of physics than of policy, more adept at thinking deep thoughts than at speaking in public, who had the good fortune to run against an incumbent whose 15 minutes of fame consisted of singing “Twinkle, twinkle, Kenneth Starr” on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Rep. Holt has come a long way.

Today, he is a knowledgeable, articulate, savvy congressman who has built a reputation not only for constituent service, but for his commitment to progressive causes — election reform, smart growth, sustainable energy, stem-cell research. His leadership in the effort to require all electronic voting machines to produce a verifiable paper trail has garnered national attention. His background in science, and his devotion to the scientific method in researching and analyzing complex public issues, has earned him widespread respect among his colleagues in Washington.

Rep. Holt has also benefited greatly from the redrawing of his 12th Congressional District — which includes the Princetons, West Windsor and Plainsboro — following the 2000 Census; what was once a Republican bastion has morphed into what some observers now consider a fairly safe Democratic seat. This, in part, may explain why his Republican challenger this year is little-known former Helmetta Borough Councilman Joseph Sinagra.

Mr. Sinagra’s campaign is built largely on a platform supporting President George W. Bush — “stay the course” in Iraq, cut taxes, outlaw abortion (except when the health of the mother is in danger), ban embryonic stem-cell research. On two issues — illegal immigration and the minimum wage — he moves well to the right of the president, railing against “amnesty” for undocumented aliens and calling for abolition of minimum-wage laws.

Rep. Holt is the clear choice in this race.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

I sometimes think the folks who do the people’s business in Trenton are really nothing more than 8-year-old boys (and girls). Evidence the absurd behavior of the members of an allegedly bipartisan special ethics committee that met this morning. First, the committee breaks down along partisan lines in unnecessary bickering over who will chair it, and then it fails to agree on whether it should consider the plight of state Sen. Wayne Bryant, the former budget committee chairman and powerful South Jersey Democrat.

According to the dailies, the meeting turned into a free-for-all with Republicans attacking Democrats for the way they have used their majority status to control the leadership. The committee, part of the ethics reform package unveiled by then Gov. Richard Codey last year, has been dormant for much of its existence, leaving a boatload of complaints unresolved.

This morning’s ugliness defeats the purpose of the committee, which was set up to battle the state’s well-earned image as an ethical cesspool.

According to the Star-Ledger, “the morning’s fireworks left non-Legislative members of the committee frustrated.”

One, Thomas C. Brown, declined a request to be considered as a compromise candidate for chairman.

“After what has been demonstrated here for the last two hours, I really am not interested in having my name put in,” Brown said.

Another, William Kersey, said the bickering between Republicans and Democrats had wasted the time of the public volunteers on the committee.

“You’ve had the debates; you’ve had the name calling back and forth,” he said. “I think the seven or eight of you need to get your acts together.”

All of this occured as the committee prepared to discuss accusations surrounding state Sen. Wayne Bryant. As the Associated Press reports, Democrats want a federal probe in to allegations that the Camden legislator “brought $4.7 million in new state funding to the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey after he was given a no-work job at the state school” to run its course. Republican members, however, said the committee needs to demonstrate that it is serious about the issue.

“It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing for this committee to do,” said Sen. Gerald Cardinale, R-Bergen. “It would go a long way toward re-establishing in the public mind that this committee is serious.”

In the end, the best the committee could do was agree to talk about it next time, after it has an opportunity to determine whether committee hearings might jeopardize an alleged federal probe — essentially postponing the question and ensuring further squabbles.

In the end, this kind of childish behavior does little more than confirm the public’s worst thoughts. Republicans are standing on far firmer ground right now, though it seems pretty clear to me that the argument is more about politics than it is about anything else (the GOP no doubt sees the ethics issue as a way of regaining control of the Legislature and are therefore willing to press it for partisan advantage — not exactly the most ethical of responses to Sen. Bryant’s alleged ethical lapse.

The only right thing to do here is to place Sen. Bryant under the committee’s microscope with the Democrats leading the charge. This would give the hearings a much greater sense of legitimacy because it removes the taint of partisanship from the process.

If it continues to break down along party lines, however, the committee might as well close up shop. It becomes a useless exercize that does little more than reinforce the status quo.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick

The situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, the violence growing daily, the divisions deepening and yet the president and his supporters are unwilling to admit just how horribly bad things have gotten.

Even The Washington Post — which had pushed for the war and has been a supporter of continued American presence — is now calling for a change in tactics, though it still refuses to commit to the only logical approach: getting out.

The president, however, not so much:

“Our goal is clear and unchanging: Our goal is victory. What is changing are the tactics we use to achieve that goal. Our commanders on the ground are constantly adjusting their approach to stay ahead of the enemy, particularly in Baghdad.” (Boston Globe)

The unwillingness of the GOP to face up to reality has allowed the mess to escalate, to mestastasize — with the death toll of both Iraqis and Americans rising, rising, rising.

This isn’t leadership. This is bullheaded foolishness. And they all deserve to find themselves out of work come January.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick