Six same-sex couples ask N.J.'s top court for permission to wed

[JackBeck]

Source: The Star-Ledger

Six same-sex couples today will ask the New Jersey Supreme Court to allow gays to marry, their attorney said.

"Second-class status isn't marriage. That's why we're returning to court," said Hayley Gorenberg, deputy legal director for Lambda Legal, which is filing the motion asking the state's highest court to revisit the matter of gay marriage.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2006 in Lewis vs. Harris that committed same-sex couples deserve the same rights and obligations as married people. Later that year, state lawmakers legalized civil unions, which were to confer all the benefits of marriage on same-sex couples without using the term "marriage."

But gay and lesbian couples and advocacy group Garden State Equality have said the civil union law has not worked and they continued to seek a law giving them the right to marry.



Read more: http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/six_same-sex_couples_ask_njs_t.html

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We've got a pretty solid case to finally win marriage equality here in NJ. The NJ Supreme Court found that denying equal rights to same-sex couples was unconstitutional and then tasked the legislature with the job of figuring out what to call our committed relationships.

The legislature chose civil unions.

But even though we recently lost our legislative battle for marriage equality, our lobbying efforts paid off big time. We got both the Democrats and Republicans to admit that civil unions do not work, essentially admitting that they failed to address what the Supreme Court had tasked them to do.

As long as Christie doesn't get a chance to tinker with the Court, a decision will be forthcoming sooner, rather than later. After speaking with a (gasp!) Republican legislator, he shared that after Christie's swearing in, a few of the Justices told him that they have been following our fight very closely, and were eager to hear our case.

[awoke_in_2003]

1. K&R...

good luck with your fight up there :hi:

[JackBeck]

4. Thank you, so much.

After a year of working on this campaign every free moment I had, while facing divisiveness and intolerance from every aspect of the political spectrum both on and off line, it's nice to hear a kind work from time to time.

[No Elephants]

2. Sounds good. Were a majority of your Supreme Court Justices appointed by Democrats?

[JackBeck]

3. Yes, a majority were appointed by Democrats.

McGreevy appointed 2 Democrats, 1 Republican.

Corzine, 1 Democrat and 1 Republican.

Todd-Whitman 1 Democrat, 1 Independent.

[No Elephants]

5. Why in hell would Democrats appoint Republican judges, for pity sakes?

That's supposedly the one big advantage left to electing Democratic Executives.

The current Governor could shift the balance on the Court, if someone retires or passes away.

Anyway, here's hoping they do the correct thing.

[TommyO]

6. Our Supreme Court unanimously ruled that gay people should have equal treatment

They were divided on how that should be implemented, so they left it to the legislature where civil unions were implemented. These civil unions have not proven equal to marriage (see the NJ Civil Union Review Commission's report at http://www.state.nj.us/lps/dcr/downloads/CURC-Final-Report-.pdf), which is why these couples are back in court.

Given the Supreme Court's unanimous decision saying that gay couples are entitled to equal treatment under NJ's Constitution, full civil marriage seems inevitable, even with the prick, Christie, in office.