Tag: gay marriage

Polls are notoriously fickle and unreliable, the results often depending on what a respond thinks his or her questioner wants to hear or how the questions themselves are framed.

But the poll released today by the Rutgers Eagleton Institute of Politics is another hopeful sign that New Jersey will do something too many states in the country have been unwilling to do: Give gays and lesbians full access to the rights the rest of us enjoy. According to the poll:

Supporters of gay marriage may find New Jersey more hospitable than many other states, according to a Rutgers-Eagleton Poll released today. By a 46 percent to 42 percent margin, adults in New Jerseyans favor legalizing same-sex nuptials, with 12 percent unsure.

The survey also shows that if the state Legislature passes a bill legalizing gay marriage, 52 percent would accept the decision, while 40 percent would support a constitutional amendment banning the practice.

“Residents of New Jersey are more supportive of gay marriage than opposed to it, and more importantly a majority would accept a legislative decision legalizing same-sex marriages,” said David Redlawsk, director of the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll and professor of political science at Rutgers University. “While this tests opinion outside the intensity of a campaign to ban gay marriage as occurred in California, there is more of a ‘live and let live’ attitude in New Jersey than in many other states that have dealt with this issue.”

The key number, of course, is not the 46-42 support figure — that’s barely more than the margin of error and pegs support at less than 50 percent. Rather, the key is the 52 percent — a real majority — who say they would accept the state Legislature’s decision, were it to legalize same-sex marriage.

There is no way of knowing what will happen when same-sex marriage is legalized — and make no mistake, it will be legalized, most likely sometime next month — but I think it’s more likely we’ll follow the model of Massachusetts and not California.

I am sure there is a majority in both houses of the state Legislature that supports same-sex marriage, but too many have failed to step up, moderates like state Sens. Bill Baroni and Jen Beck, who have stood up for gay rights and other socially liberal positions in the past, but have remained silent on the issue until now.

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora and state Sen. Loretta Weinberg have sponsored legislation — with 11 Assembly co-sponsors and five Senate co-sponsors — that deserves a hearing, and soon.
(There is a competing bill in the Assembly, voiding same-sex marriages, that is unlikely to get traction.)

The bills, both called the “Freedom of Religion and Equality in Civil Marriage Act,” were introduced in June 2008, but remain dormant in both Judiciary committees. Sen. Paul Sarlo, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Tom Moran that he remains undecided.

“These are people I go to church with,” he said. “I’m leaning towards not supporting it. But I’m an open-minded person.”

Let’s hope so. It’s his ballgame for now.

Last week, I wrote of the Episcopal Church’s slow, but seemingly inevitable move toward blessing same-sex marriages — some thing I view as indicative of a positive societal change. The church has not done so yet, but it has opened the door for individual bishops to allow the priests that serve under them to go as far as blessing same-sex unions without calling them marriage.

It is, admittedly, a fine point, a bit of language parsing that was designed to maintain unity with the larger Anglican Union, of which the American church is a part.

Contrast this news story on the Catholic Church in New Jersey:

Catholic bishops in New Jersey have begun a campaign against same-sex marriage in anticipation of a possible vote on the issue by state legislators sometime after the November election.

The bishops directed Catholic priests throughout the state to distribute in parish bulletins last Sunday a 2,300-word letter opposing same-sex marriage. The priests are also expected to speak about the issue from the altar after Labor Day.

“The Catholic Church teaches today and has always and everywhere taught for 2,000 years that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” the letter reads. “This great truth about marriage is not some obscure doctrinal fine point but a fact of human nature, recognized from time immemorial by people of virtually every faith and culture.”

I have no problem with the church holding the view that same-sex marriage violates church law and refusing to sanctify those unions or allow Catholics to participate in the official spiritual life of the church. That is for the Catholic Church and its believers to deal with.

The issue is what comes later in the letter, according to the Ledger:

The letter distributed last Sunday mentions Vatican writings and a verse straight from the catechism of the Catholic Church, a text that spells out official Catholic teachings.

The bishops reason that, given that God “bestowed” the gift of marriage on humanity, “governments, therefore, have a duty to reinforce and protect this permanent institution and to pass it on to future generations, rather than attempt to redefine it arbitrarily for transitory political or social reasons.”

The church, basically, wants the government to adopt and abide by church teachings, to acknowledge that marriage was a gift bestowed by god on humanity — something that would privilege the church and other religious denominations that refuse to recognize same-sex marriage over Americans who support the legalization of same-sex marriage. (That would be a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which prohibits Congress — and, by extension, thanks to the 14th Amendment, the states — from making laws “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”)

The dispute, when framed this way, makes it clear that the issue is not necessarily whether government should legalize same-sex marriage, but whether government should be involved in marriage at all and whether it should leave the designation of unions as marriage to the couples involved. Government then could focus on contractual unions between two people, which would be gender-neutral and would cover all of the current 1,000-plus rights and benefits that now go to married couples.

Health care, of course, could be addressed if we were to go with a single-payer system, but loads of others — access to hospitals, all federal benefits — are tied to the marriage label. Even in New Jersey, where civil unions are supposed to confer equal status, gay and lesbian couples have faced arbitrary refusals.

Basically, either government — and I’m talking about Congress and the president and the 45 states who have yet to do so — must legalize same-sex marriage or get out of the marriage business altogether.