Tag: gay marriage

Alfred Doblin, editorial page editor of The Record of Hackensack, says New Jersey could experience a windfall — like the one anticipated for Massachussets — if it would just call a rose a rose and allow gay couples from all over the country to come to the Garden State to get married.

Massachusetts is about to get a financial windfall. According to a state-commissioned study, 32,000 same-sex couples will travel to Massachusetts to marry over the next three years. Allowing out-of-state, same-sex couples to wed will create 330 permanent new jobs and add $111 million to the state’s economy. That does not include revenue from wedding guests traveling to the Gay State or other wedding-related expenses.

Back to New Jersey. We have everything Massachusetts has and more. New Jersey has proximity to New York. New Jersey has a shore. New Jersey has Atlantic City. What it doesn’t have is enough new revenue.

This month, the state Casino Control Commission released its report on June casino revenue. It stinks. Revenue is down 11 percent compared to the same month last year. Slot machine revenue is down. Table game revenue is down. Atlantic City is a 12-month-a-year tourist destination. There is no reason that the cottage wedding business of Las Vegas could not be duplicated in Atlantic City with same-sex couples. An infusion of same-sex couples into the Atlantic City economy is good business. The state makes money on the licenses; casinos and hotels make money on the couples and weddings.

And it’s not just South Jersey that will see new revenue. Imagine the numbers of out-of-state, same-sex couples marrying in Hoboken and Jersey City with the Manhattan skyline as a backdrop. We have the geography. All we need are wedding licenses.

Imagine, doing what’s right and generating revenue at the same time. No wonder the state has failed to move on this.

I’m hopeful that this shows that the anti-gay-marriage forces are losing their power.

Organizers conceded Monday that their initiatives to repeal two Oregon gay rights laws will not make the November ballot.

The fact that the initiatives are stalled offers more evidence that opponents are losing support, say gay rights activists, who were also celebrating the legalization of same-sex marriages in California on Monday.

The California courts have weighed in on the side of equality.

There is no other way to view the decision handed down today granting same-sex couples the right to marry — not just to join in civil unions or some other form of domestic partnership.

This quote from a story on The New York Times’ Web site sums the issue up:

“It’s just amazing to feel like I am a full citizen — I am not a second-class citizen,” said Christmas Laubrile, a nurse, who was with her partner, Alice Heimsoth. “I don’t have to sit in the back of the bus, and I don’t have to take second best.”

Civil rights groups have balked at connecting the struggles of black Americans to gays and lesbians or even to undocumented immigrants, but the parallel is apt. Gays and lesbians across the country are prohibited from entering into state-sanctioned marriages because of what essentially amounts to a religious objection.

The court today minced few words in its 4-3 decision. The San Francisco Chronicle offered this report:

In a 4-3 decision, the justices said the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the “fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship.” The ruling is likely to flood county courthouses with applications from couples newly eligible to marry when the decision takes effect in 30 days.

“The California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples,” Chief Justice Ronald George wrote in the majority opinion.

Allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry “will not deprive opposite-sex couples of any rights and will not alter the legal framework of the institution of marriage,” George said.

In addition, he said, the current state law, enacted in 1977 and reaffirmed by the voters in 2000, discriminates against same-sex couples on the basis of their sexual orientation – discrimination that the court, for the first time, put in the same legal category as racial or gender bias.

The ruling affects the entire state, but also shines a spotlight on New Jersey, where the courts forced the state Legislature to address the issue in 2006. The Legislature, however, crafted a civil-union law that provided to gays and lesbians most of the rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples, but refused to go all the way and call it marriage.

But words matter, as retired state Supreme Court Chief Justice Deborah Poritz said, and the civil union law has failed to meet the court’s requirements. Same-sex couples

Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts, D-Camden, thinks that could change soon:

“As I have said before, the granting of full marriage equality to New Jersey’s same-sex couples is simply a question of ‘when,’ not ‘if.’

“In the year since New Jersey’s civil union law took effect the sky has
not fallen in and the meaning of marriage for opposite-sex couples has not been
eroded.

“Those realizations make it all the more likely that New Jersey will
ultimately be the first state to legislatively reach the inevitable conclusion
that marriage is a right that should be enjoyed by all residents.”

Could it come this year? Steven Goldstein of Garden State Equality hopes so. His group has been pushing for a same-sex marriage bill by the end of the year and he sees the California ruling as an important prod, according to The Star-Ledger. He said

“What happens in California does not stay in California, and that is a great thing for equality.”

I hope he’s right, though I think this comment from Assemblyman Reed Gusciora, D-Mercer, the only openly gay member of the state Legislature, maybe the most instructive — especially since Senate Bill 112, sponsored by Sens. Loretta Weinberg, D-Bergen, Raymond Lesniak, D-Union, and Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex, is languishing in the Senate without being assigned to a committee:

“I don’t see the Legislature taking it up anytime soon,” Gusciora said. “I think the political will is still not there.”

It is time for the governor to show some leadership on this and for the handful of Republicans who say they support equality — Bill Baroni, for one — to step up and add their name to the sponsor list, taking partisan politics out of the mix.

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

E-mail me clicking here.

California has taken to the courts to fight a battle that is likely to be waged in New Jersey in the state Legislature perhaps as soon as this year. At issue is whether California’s domestic partnership law confers second-class citizenship on same-sex couples — a contention made by New Jersey’s gay and lesbian community and a panel authorized to review the Garden State’s civil union law.

The California high court ruled in 2004 that San Francisco could not issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples because the state banned same-sex marriages. But it did not rule on the constitutionality of the state ban itself.

That’s where the current fight comes in, according to The New York Times. California’s

state ban on same-sex marriage is based on a law enacted by the Legislature in 1977 and a statewide initiative approved by the voters in 2000 that defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman. The question before the court is whether those laws violate provisions of the state Constitution protecting equality and fundamental rights.

A central argument being offered by supporters of same-sex marriage is that the use of different terminology creates separate classes of citizens.

“Domestic partnership and marriage are not equal,” Ms. Stewart said. “Words matter. Names matter.”

The Supreme Court here was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage, in a 1948 decision called Perez v. Sharp. The United States Supreme Court did not follow suit until 1967.

Ms. Stewart asked whether giving interracial couples the same rights under a different name — “say we called it transracial unions instead of marriage,” she said — would have satisfied the state Constitution in 1948.

Several of the justices seemed receptive to the analogy. Chief Justice Ronald M. George, seen by many here as the swing vote on a closely divided court, paused three times during the argument to quote from the Perez decision.

“The essence of the right to marry is freedom to join in marriage with the person of one’s choice,” Chief Justice George said at one point, quoting a passage from the Perez decision by Justice Roger J. Traynor, who would go on to become chief justice of the court.

The state’s argument essentially boils down to “take it slow; society isn’t quite ready.” (The arguments of the anti-gay groups are based on fear and loathing and do not warrant a response.)

The state maybe right about society, but that’s not a good enough reason to maintain separate classes of couples. If fails the basic standards of fairness and justice.

There is another aspect to this that needs to be raised, perhaps legally, and that is a First Amendment challenge. Marriage, as it is presently constructed, is based on a religious right. Allowing religion to dictate the law seems a violation of the separation clause, a violation of same-sex couples’ rights to come together and be recognized by the state.

The real answer is to remove the word marriage from the statute book altogether and leave that to the religious realm and individual choice. Let the law structure the rights of couples, regardless of whether they are man and woman, man and man or woman and woman.

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

E-mail me by clicking here.