28 October 2006

New Jersey court orders legislature to provide for same-sex unions

In a 4:3 split decision, the Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey ruled that it was discriminatory to deny same-sex couples the rights and benefits of marriage. Full essay.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that committed same-sex couples must have all the rights of married people. At this point, the Supreme Court flips it
to the state legislature giving the NJlegislature six months to either pass a law legalising gay marriage or creating a new institution to guarantee marriage rights under another name.
Flip-flopping? yes.
President bush, in his quest to capture more republican seats was delighted with the NJ Supreme Ct's ruling, as he threw done the 'conservative family of marriage between man n woman' card in Iowa.
All of the red-neck states, the 'fly-over states' are against gay marriages.
Civil Unions will be the main stay, as gay marriages are still not recognized.
Despite, the NJ supreme Court's decision, it did not go thru with the complete n final decision, allowing the State Legislature to vote on it.
However, gay families with their children will continue to fight for equal rights as same-sex unions.
Gay marriages are such a sensitive topic with middle America, it sickens me, as the bible-belt of Christian 'soldiers marching on...' are themselves full of hypocrisy.
'Pray to Jesus Jesus will save u???'...but hang blacks n gays is their real mantra.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the judgement. I don't think the right to name of the institution of marriage should be extended automatically.

The issue should no longer be about rights. The social acceptance factor which we as gays crave is legitimate. However, the social acceptance and perception of marriage has historically been between a man and a woman. It will not work if we simply take on the term and use it to refer to homosexual civil unions.

What I mean to say is that the term "marriage" is what it is today because of its history and how it has evolved within our society. Do we have a right to claim this supposed mantle of legimacy by claiming that a homosexual civil union is identical to a marriage?

I think that there are differences insofar as there are differences between a man and a woman. Perhaps the argument then becomes whether these are substantive enough differences to justfy a different name? I think that the question is more correctly stated as whether they are "same enough" to be under the same umbrella term. This should be an appropriate question for the legislature to answer, not the Court.

Yawning Bread Sampler said...

Someone emailed privately to recommend this link:

http://www.bidstrup.com/marriage.htm