Hank Kalet

Yesterday’s vote to allow “gay and lesbian couples to enter into civil unions that mirror heterosexual marriage” may not have gone far enough (it creates a separate, but equal and parallel structure — remember Plessey v. Ferguson), but it was rather historic for New Jersey nonetheless. New Jersey becomes only the fourth state to all civil unions and maybe ready to embark on the journey toward full marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

Here is how the folks representing voters in Cranbury, Jamesburg, Monroe and South Bruswick (the 14th District) voted, according to the Office of Legislative Services:

• Assemblyman Bill Baroni (R) — yes
• Assemblywoman Linda Greenstein (D) — yes
• Sen. Peter Inverso (R) — no

Here is what Assemblyman Baroni said, according to BlueJersey.com (the quote was included in Star-Ledger wire-service reports yesterday, but was not included in the stories that ran today in any of the papers):

Mr Speaker – let’s vote and begin to end this discrimination.

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

As promised in this week’s Dispatches, my year-end guide to my favorite discs, here are my favorite singles of the year:

1. Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”
2. Chris Cornell, “You Know My Name”
3. Dixie Chicks, “Not Ready to Make Nice”
4. Prince, “Black Sweat”
5. Corrine Bailey Rae, “Put Your Records On”
6. Arctic Monkeys, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor”
7. Bob Dylan, “Thunder on the Mountain”
8. Shakira w/Wyclef Jean, “Hips Don’t Lie”
9. Outkast, “Idlewild Blue”
10. Earl Greyhound, “All Better Now”
11. U2 and Greenday, “The Saints are Coming”
12. Panic! at the Disco, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies”
13. Oasis, “Lyla”
14. Pearl Jam, “World-Wide Suicide”
15. Christina Aguilera, “Ain’t No Other Man”
16. Earl Greyhound, “All Better Now”
17. Shakira, “Illegal”
18. O.K. Go, “Here It Goes Again”
19. Bitter:Sweet, “The Mating Game”
20. Bruce Springsteen, “Pay Me My Money Down”
21. Beyonce, “Ring the Alarm”
22. Snow Patrol, “Chasing Cars”
23. Rihanna, “SOS”
24. Beyonce, “Irreplaceable”
25. Natasha Beddinfield, “Unwritten”
26. Pearl Jam, “Life Wasted”
27. Rihanna, “Unfaithful”
28. Nelly Furtado w/ Timbalake, “Promiscuous”
29. John Legend, “Show Me”
30. John Mayer, “Waiting for the World to Change”

I’ve probably forgotten something, but this seems to be it.

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

The Star-Ledger, in an editorial, asks a question I’ve been asking for a long time:

Should the Legislature reconsider its policy of having a prayer before the start of a legislative session?

I would have asked it a little differently — rather than “reconsider,” I would have used the word “end.” But that’s quibbling. The editorial raises what I think is an important issue.

And it raising it because of an incident the other day that makes it clear why the opening prayer is a bad idea and why it violates the spirit of the establishment clause of the First Amendment.

According to the editorial, the Rev. Vincent Fields, pastor of the Greater Works Ministries in Absecon, was enlisted to open the session when

“the Holy Spirit” led him to speak out against same-sex marriage, an issue that happened to be before the Legislature.

And if that weren’t enough to get some controversy going, he evoked the name of Jesus twice in his prayer. Imagine that, a Christian minister using the name of Jesus.

So the Legislature — apparently shocked — banned him from offering future benedictions.

What is shocking, however, is not that the Rev. Fields went off script or even that he offered an anti-gay rant (as some have called it). What is shocking is that this has not come up before.

As I wrote Tuesday, the South Brunswick Township Council had to wrestle with a similar issue a few years back regarding its Community Unity Day celebration:

A few years ago, the South Brunswick Township Council attempted to craft rules governing who could speak and not speak from the stage or have a booth at the township’s Community Unity Day celebration. The issue stemmed from a speech made during the 1999 festival in which a member of a Sayreville Christian group offered a fire-and-brimstone sermon from the stage.

The council at first attempted to split the difference — opting for a limited-access plan that would give the township some say over who was to speak and perform. We argued in an editorial (sorry, not available on line) at the time that “placing restrictions on groups based on the content of their speeches or performances would seem to violate these groups’ right to free expression. But to leave things as they are leaves the township open to the criticism that it is endorsing a particular faith, thereby tearing down the church-state wall.”

That’s why we had advocated having the township open the stage only to invited guests — primarily school acts and local dance groups — to prevent the likelihood that the stage might be dominated by religious groups and to keep the council out of the religion business.

The Ledger makes the same argument, but doesn’t explicitly call for the prayer to end:

If the lawmakers are going to invite ministers, priests, rabbis and imams to pray, they can’t dictate that the clergy tell them only what they want to hear. They can’t outlaw certain prayer topics. That’s precisely what the Constitution prohibits: government proscribing religious expression. It’s also a lesson that lawmakers should have learned in dealing with the last New Jersey poet laureate. Gov. James McGreevey stripped Amiri Baraka of his title as the laureate after Baraka read his poem, “Somebody Blew Up America,” at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2002. The poem about 9/11 was decried as anti-Semitic. The post has not been filled since.

The Constitution allows clergy, poets, artists and anybody else the right to free expression. For a government body to attempt to set parameters for that speech is, well, un-American. The Senate, it seems, has two choices: abandon the use of clergy or relinquish any attempt to censor what’s said.

If it was up to me, I’d send the clergy home.

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

I don’t know how you can read about something like this and not come to the conclusion that capital punishment — state-sanctioned and premeditated murder — is not cruel and unusual and that is should not be prohibited under the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Here is what I said about the lethal-injection issue earlier this year in The Progressive Populist.

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

The Record of Bergen County asked an interesting question last week of the mayors in its coverage area — an idea on which we decided to piggyback: Should the state Legislature OK the proposed civil-union rules (as it is expected to do today), will mayors actually perform the ceremonies?

Several mayors in Bergen County — including right-winger Steve Lonegan of Bogota — said no.
That, according ot the story, would leave the mayors in violation of state antidiscrimination law. The remedies are unclear — probably litigation, which would not help the couples looking to unite.

Unlike members of the clergy, who cannot be compelled to violate their religious beliefs, mayors and other non-clergy empowered to perform marriages in New Jersey cannot pick and choose who they marry — or civil unionize.

As The Record points out, elected officials have “taken an oath to uphold state law, which since 1992 has banned discrimination based on sexual orientation.”

“If you are a judge or a mayor or other person in New Jersey who does not want to perform any kind of [homosexual] relationship-recognizing ceremony, you’re going to be in a bind,” said Sally Goldfarb, a Rutgers law professor and expert on New Jersey constitutional law.

The easiest route for objectors, she said, would be to stop officiating all together.

“The law authorizes these people to perform marriages. It doesn’t require them,” she said. “They’re going to have to, I think, either celebrate these relationships for everybody or for nobody.”

What kind of effect this may have is unclear, because couples do not have to register in their own communities and because there are others who can conduct the ceremony.

But it is a question worth asking.

We put the question to several local mayors (we have four in our coverage area) and received responses from South Brunswick Mayor Frank Gambatese and Jamesburg Mayor Tony LaMantia. Both were somewhat uncomfortable answering the question, with Mayor Gambatese declining ultimately comment. Mayor LaMantiam however, told our reporter, Joseph Harvie, that

he would perform a same-sex ceremony if the law is approved. “Just as any wedding, it would have to be at my convenience,” Mayor LaMantia said. “As long as it’s the law, I’d do it. Everyone has their own opinion. I have my opinion, but if it’s a law then, you know.”

At least he acknowledged his responsibility under the law. That’s more than can be said about many of the folks up north.

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