NJ Will Recognize Same-Sex Unions

By a 4-3 vote, the Supreme Court of New Jersey voted in favor of providing the same rights and benefits of marriage to same-sex couples. However, the Supreme Court kicked the decision back to the State Legislature to decide on the term that will be used.

The State has 180 days to decide whether they will call the union a "marriage" or give it some other term like "civil union." But who cares? As long as full rights and benefits are granted, the rest is just semantics.

While a vote of 4-3 in favor of this decision appears to be a split, it's actually quite the opposite. The 3 who voted against the decision did so because they didn't want to kick the semantics decision back to the State. They wanted to make the decision on what to call the unions within their Supreme Court Ruling, and in fact, they argued the Court should give full marriage rights to LGBT couples, including calling such unions "marriages." So in actuality, the decision was a 7-0 vote, with 4 wanting to defer the semantics to the State and 3 wanting to grant full marriage rights on the spot.

Matt Daniels, President of the Alliance for Marriage, is, of course, upset about the ruling. One of his comments was, "They took the future of marriage out of the hands of the people of New Jersey." The future of marriage .... How is it that allowing same-sex unions has any affect on the future of heterosexual marriage other than now marriage is not an exclusive right?

We've been asking this question for a long time. We have yet to hear a compelling response as to how allowing same-sex marriage will have any adverse effect on heterosexual marriage. If anyone has a compelling reason they can offer, we'd love to consider it.

Interestingly, if you visit the Alliance for Marriage website, part of their mission reads, "AFM exists to educate the public, the media, elected officials, and civil society leaders on the benefits of marriage for children, adults and society." Isn't this what we all want?

Another bonus of the NJ Supreme Court decision is the lack of residency requirements on those who seek to get married. The impact could be huge nationwide. Essentially New Jersey has opened the door for couples to travel to NJ, get married and then return to their own state and challenge the laws there. It remains to be seen how significant this will turn out to be.

There are those who would disagree with our assertion that the remaining decision left to Legislature in New Jersey is one of semantics.

Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality told the Newark Star-Ledger, "Those who would view today's...ruling as a victory for same-sex couples are dead wrong. Marriage is the only currency of commitment the real world universally understands and accepts."

We respectfully disagree.