New Jersey's Window of Opportunity for Marriage Equality
The marriage equality debate sure moves fast and furious these days. Just days after losing a heartbreaking vote in Maine over the issue, all eyes, ears and phone calls to legislators are heading to New Jersey, where the state has the tiniest window of opportunity to pass a marriage equality bill that will recognize full civil marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.
Why is that window so small? Because on Election Day, New Jersey voters gave the boot to their current governor, and marriage equality supporter, Jon Corzine. His replacement, Gov.-Elect Chris Christie, thinks that gay marriage is the devil.
So now there's just a two-month window while Gov. Corzine wraps up a lame duck legislative session for marriage equality to pass. And the state's leading LGBT rights organization, Garden State Equality, is coming out like gangbusters to make sure that over the next eight weeks, New Jersey legislators hear loud and clear that the state needs marriage equality legislation to truly value the equal rights for all of its citizens. That includes a wave of television advertisements that launched on Election night, describing how New Jersey same-sex couples lose out with no marriage rights.
New Jersey columnist Tom Moran says that the New Jersey legislature owes it to everyone in their state to debate marriage equality legislation over the next two months. Or they could wait, and deny rights to New Jersey gays and lesbians for at least the next four years, if not longer.
"The political stars, for a few brief months, sit in alignment for a move to legalize gay marriage in New Jersey," Moran writes. "Or we could choose the other option, and punt. We could continue to insult the dignity of thousands of gay couples who live openly among us, often with children, and typically in harmony with the neighbors who know them best."
It would be somewhat of a quid pro quo situation if New Jersey were to recognize gay marriage. That's because the National Organization Marriage -- the nationwide group that poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Maine and millions of dollars into California to repeal same-sex marriage rights -- is located in the Garden State. (They now have a national office in Washington, D.C., but New Jersey is where the homophobic organization calls home.) There would be a nice sense of payback in seeing New Jersey move forward on marriage equality, given that the National Organization for Marriage has been so successful in leaving gay rights advocates hurting on post-Election Day mornings.
Check out the commercials below. Are these the type of ads that might move legislators to support marriage equality?
Michael Jones
is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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