NJ public gets chance to critique civil unions

Public gets its chance to critique civil unions
Sunday, September 23, 2007
BY ROBERT SCHWANEBERG
Star-Ledger Staff
Gov. Jon Corzine sees gay marriage coming to New Jersey -- but not next year, when, he says, it could be exploited to provoke a backlash affecting the presidential race.

Conservatives in New Jersey are pushing to put a proposed constitutional amendment, prohibiting same-sex marriage, on the 2008 bal lot.

Against that backdrop, a state commission this week will hold the first of three biweekly hearings, scheduled for Wednesday evenings, to examine how well the state's 7-month-old civil unions law is working.

Civil unions are intended to give same-sex couples all the benefits and obligations that state law confers through marriage, only under a different name. The advisory commission is charged with investigat ing whether civil unions are living up to that promise and can recommend "additional protections" for same-sex couples.

Corzine told a group of gay journalists this month he thinks New Jersey will eventually allow same- sex couples to marry, but that next year is "too early," according to his press secretary, Lilo Stainton.

"His fear is the issue will get hi jacked by conservatives; it will become a political tool for conservatives rather than an intelligent debate," Stainton said. Corzine be lieves "this is not a debate that New Jersey or the nation is ready for now, but it's something that should be on the table within a few years, possibly as early as 2009," she said.

"He has said repeatedly that if the Legislature passes a bill, he would sign it" to legalize same-sex marriage.

The country's first same-sex marriages were performed in the spring of 2004 in Massachusetts, by order of that state's highest court. That November, voters in 11 states amended their constitutions to ban gay marriage. Some observers be lieve those ballot questions drew conservative voters to the polls and helped re-elect President Bush.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Corzine, a Democrat, is "probably right" in guessing Republican presidential candidates might rail against gay marriage, "but there are so many other issues for 2008 that I think it will be a lesser issue than in 2004."

Joseph Marbach, chairman of the political science department at Seton Hall University, said the backlash against Massachusetts already has occurred and there may not be "a second round." Corzine, he said, "might be overly cautious in this case."

When the civil union law took effect in February, the gay rights group Garden State Equality set a goal of legalizing same-sex marriage within two years. Its chairman, Steven Goldstein, said it was "great news that Governor Corzine, on the substance of marriage equality, is clearly moving our way. We'll take a debate on 'when' rather than 'if' any day of the week."

The New Jersey Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage has a very different goal for 2008: get ting a proposal on the ballot to de fine marriage in the state constitution as the union of one man and one woman.

John Tomicki, the coalition's chairman, said it has collected about 50,000 signatures in support of that proposal. He added that his coalition "sees no value" in testify ing at the upcoming hearings on civil unions.

"It's like rigging a sporting event so Steven Goldstein can come out and say: 'Oh, it's not working. We need full marriage rights.'"

Goldstein, who also serves as vice chairman of the Civil Union Review Commission, called the law creating civil unions "one of the great civil rights disasters of all time."

All three of the hearings are scheduled for 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The dates and places are:


Wednesday at the New Jersey Law Center on Ryder's Lane (off Route 1) in New Brunswick.


Oct. 10 in the Dennis Flyer Memorial Theater (in Lincoln Hall) at Camden County College in Blackwood.


Oct. 24 at Nutley Township Hall, One Kennedy Drive, Nutley.

More information is available on a state Web site (http:// www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases07/ pr20070919b.html).



Robert Schwaneberg may be reached at rschwaneberg@starled ger.com or (609) 989-0324.




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