This morning, my friend Zoe Kentucky at Demagogue had an item in which she sounded kind of disheartened. She knew the New Jersey Supreme Court would rule on same-sex marriage this afternoon, and she wasn’t optimistic about the political fallout. As Zoe put it, “As I see it, we’re pretty much screwed no matter how they rule — in favor, the election is over; opposed, we lost a critical case in a state that is majority pro-gay marriage.”
Well, as it turns out, there was a third option.
New Jersey’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples.
But the court left it to the Legislature to determine whether the state will honor gay marriage or some other form of civil union.
Advocates on both sides of the issue believed the state posed the best chance for gay marriage to win approval since Massachusetts became the only state to do so in 2003 because the New Jersey Supreme Court has a history of extending civil rights protections.
Instead, the high court stopped short of fully approving gay marriage and gave lawmakers 180 days to rewrite marriage laws to either include gay couples or create new civil unions.
As I understand the ruling, New Jersey didn’t say yes or no to gay marriage specifically, but ruled that the state has to allow for legally-recognized gay relationships. Marriage, civil unions, whatever — the state just has to move towards some kind of legal equality.
The whole ruling is available online here (.pdf), and from what I can tell, it’s perhaps the best political solution the progressive community could have hoped for.
It’s unlikely that the state legislature will approve a law to approve of gay marriage statewide, but the New Jersey Supreme Court has mandated that lawmakers do something, probably akin to Vermont’s civil-union law.
For the anti-gay right, this poses something of a challenge on how best to proceed.
If the state Supreme Court had mandated an actual gay-marriage law, ala Massachusetts, Dobson & Co. would go apoplectic and the issue could begin to have an effect on the midterm elections.
But civil unions and gay marriage are not exactly the same thing. Indeed, I’d encourage progressives in New Jersey to put the GOP on the defensive by saying, “We support the approach President Bush laid out in 2004.”
President Bush said in an interview [in October 2004] that he disagreed with the Republican Party platform opposing civil unions of same-sex couples and that the matter should be left up to the states.”
Mr. Bush has previously said that states should be permitted to allow same-sex unions, even though White House officials have said he would not have endorsed such unions as governor of Texas. But Mr. Bush has never before made a point of so publicly disagreeing with his party’s official position on the issue.
In an interview on Sunday with Charles Gibson, an anchor of “Good Morning America” on ABC, Mr. Bush said, “I don’t think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that’s what a state chooses to do so.” […]
“I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights. And I strongly believe that marriage ought to be defined as between a union between a man and a woman. Now, having said that, states ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others.”
New Jersey can pass a civil unions that that is a) consistent with the state Supreme Court’s ruling; b) a step forward for civil rights and equality; and c) entirely in line with the beliefs our very conservative Republican president. Sounds like a plan to me.
Post Script: By the way, the ruling comes by way of a Republican judge, appointed to the bench by a Republican governor. FYI.