New Jersey’s State Legislature Votes To Legalize Same-Sex Unions

TRENTON, N.J. — Under pressure from New Jersey’s highest court to offer marriage or its equivalent to gay couples, the legislature voted yesterday to make New Jersey the third state to allow civil unions.Governor Corzine, a Democrat, said he would sign the measure, which would extend to same-sex couples all the rights and privileges available under state law to married people. The bill passed the Assembly 56–19 and the Senate 23–12. It is to take effect 60 days after the governor signs it.“Love counts,” a chief sponsor of the bill, Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a Democrat, said as the debate opened. “The gender of whom one loves should not matter to the state.”But Assemblyman Ronald Dancer, a Republican, said: “It’s my personal belief, faith, and religious practice that marriage has been defined in the Bible. And this is one time that I cannot compromise my personal beliefs and faiths.”Massachusetts is the only state to allow gay marriage. Vermont and Connecticut have civil unions, and California has domestic partnerships that work similarly. Among the benefits gay couples would get under New Jersey’s civil unions bill are adoption rights, hospital visitation rights, and inheritance rights.Gay-rights advocates welcomed the legislation as a step forward but said they would continue to push for the right to marry. Some lawmakers also considered yesterday’s action as an interim step on the way to full marriage rights.“This should be called what it is — marriage,” a sponsor of the bill, State Senator Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat of Bergen, said. She said the title should be changed after there has been some time to study how the civil unions bill works.Senators voted down a measure that would have added language to the bill to define marriage as only between a man and a woman.The bill was drafted in response to a landmark New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in October that required the state to extend the rights and benefits of marriage to gay couples within 180 days.

New Jersey’s State Legislature Votes To Legalize Same-Sex Unions

New Jersey’s State Legislature Votes To Legalize Same-Sex Unions

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