I guess I've been so busy getting ready for the holidays, this slipped under my radar!
After a long, congratulatory ceremony at the Trenton War Memorial yesterday, Gov. Corzine signed a bill granting civil unions to same-sex couples.
New Jersey became just the fifth state to extend some rights of marriage to gay couples, but many of the speakers said the law was just a stop on the way to full gay marriage - possibly in the next two years.
"That is something that needs to be our goal," Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts (D., Camden) said. "We need to commit ourselves to achieving that as soon as possible."
The civil-unions law will go into effect in 60 days. Among the rights that gay couples will have are hospital visitations, survivor benefits, and eligibility for tax deductions. Employers also must treat couples in a civil union the same as married couples.
The law requires municipal clerks to issue licenses for civil unions, and any mayor who performs marriages must also perform civil unions...
Same-sex couples at the signing ceremony said that they would join in a civil union, but that they regarded this as a legal formality, not an occasion for a grand celebration.
"A lot of people feel that way," said Forest Kairos of Mount Laurel. "They've had ceremonies."
Kairos and her partner of 10 years, Veronica Hoff, were married in a private, Quaker-based ceremony eight years ago, and went to Vermont for a civil union.
But Hoff said a civil union in New Jersey was significant because it "means about a thousand rights."
"Yeah, we have about seven now," Kairos added.
Ed Mather said he and his partner of 37 years, Robert Kriesat, a retired Lutheran minister, would join in a civil union, but would wait until they could get married to have a celebration.
"That will be kind of the journey's completion," said Kriesat, of Morris County. "We'll be able to join the rest of our family and say, 'Yes, we're married.' "
Steven Goldstein, the chair of Garden State Equality, said that about 95 percent of the couples he had talked with felt the same way. Goldstein got married in 2002 in Montreal, where gay marriages are legal, but he said he would have a huge ceremony in New Jersey once they were legal here.
"Every gay person on the Eastern Seaboard" will be there, he said.
The bill-signing was historic, Goldstein said, because of the support the speakers expressed for full marriage rights.
Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D., Bergen), the prime sponsor of the civil-unions bill in the Senate, predicted that gay marriage would pass in her next term in office.
"These rights will be known as they should be, under the banner of marriage," she said.
The law was written after the state Supreme Court ruled in October that gay couples must be eligible for the same protections as married couples. Saying gay marriage didn't have enough support yet, the Legislature passed a civil-unions law instead.
Let's hear it for New Jersey, it's open-minded citizens and a State Supreme Court not cowed by fearmongering fundamentalist conservatives!
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