NJ Families Pursue Equality Through Lawsuit

Gay and lesbian families in New Jersey charge that civil unions do not, in fact, provide the same rights and protections as marriage. In order to gain those rights, they say, they need access to marriage itself, and nothing less -- and they have gone to court to obtain them, a June 29 story from New Jersey news source the Statehouse Bureau reported.

The suit was filed on June 29, the article said, at New Jersey's Superior Court. Seven same-sex couples have joined the suit.

"Their main argument is that the state Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that same sex couples should be guaranteed the same rights as heterosexual married couples, but in a 4-3 vote left it up to the Legislature how to achieve that," the article recounted. "The minority in that decision said the state needed to allow marriage for same-sex couples. The Legislature chose civil unions instead, which come with the exact same legal rights."

That is, civil unions offer the same rights as marriage in theory. But in practice, and when dealing with people who do not understand the law the same way they understand marriage, it's a different story.

The article related the story of Daniel Weiss, whose partner, John Grant, was struck by a car and seriously injured. Hospital staff didn't know what to make of Weiss' explanation that he was Grant's partner and that the two were in a civil union -- so they turned to Grant's sister for medical decisions on the patient's behalf.

"At the moment that we needed civil unions the most to provide equality, it failed for us miserably," Weiss recounted. "To this day, the records at Bellevue Hospital do not recognize that I am the next of kin."

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie opposes marriage equality for gay and lesbian families, and has said that civil unions are good enough for non-heterosexuals. But that's not the experience of many of the state's same-sex couples, who feel that civil unions, despite giving them equality on paper, fall far short in the realm of real life.

The Associated Press reported in a June 28 article that the problems encountered by gay and lesbian families far exceed medical emergencies. One New Jersey man lost insurance coverage for his partner and their children when an insurance auditor failed to grasp what it meant for civil unions to, on paper, offer parity with marriage. And when a woman tried to adopt her partner's biological progeny as her own legal child, she was forced to "jump through hoops," the AP reported, in a way that would not have been asked of heterosexual couples.

The suit charges that far from providing equality, the civil unions law makes same-sex couples all the more unequal.

"The separate and inherently unequal statutory scheme singles out lesbians and gay men for inferior treatment on the basis of their sexual orientation and sex and also has a profoundly stigmatizing effect on them, their children and other lesbian and gay New Jerseyans," the suit claims.

One mother put it in simpler terms.

"When you say you're married, it's universal," said Elena Quinones, who is forced to bring a sheaf of legal documents along on vacations, or even visits to the doctor's office, so that her partner's parental relationship to their son will be respected and honored. "You say 'civil union,' it's like you're speaking another language."

Len Deo, the founder and president of the anti-gay New Jersey Family Policy Council, offered a justification for barring same-sex couples that few, if any, gays and lesbians would find to be sensible, let alone sensitive to the challenges imposed on their families.

"Every person in the state of New Jersey has a right to marry a person of the opposite sex," Deo told the press. "The Legislature has decided that if you reject that and want to have a relationship with a person of the same sex -- we are going to call two men or two women civil unions."

Most medical experts agree that sexuality is not a matter of "choice." Gays and lesbians themselves say that they do not elect to have romantic and sexual feelings for members of their own gender, but rather insist that those feelings are innate and natural for them, in the same way romantic and sexual feelings for members of the opposite gender are innate and natural for heterosexuals.

Gov. Christie said during a radio interview that he will not support marriage equality, but he also said that same-sex couples should be afforded equal rights and protections. Christie added that he would be open to enhancing the existing civil rights law.

But for New Jersey's gay and lesbian families, additional reams of paper dedicated to clarifying and strengthening the law will be worthless in the real world as long as marriage -- and all the social currency that the word implies -- is denied them.