While it may be a step forward in some ways, New Jersey's civil unions law also creates a 'gay ghetto'
By Jon Whiten
add to del.icio.us | e-mail the editors
"In respect of civil rights, common to all citizens, the Constitution of the United States does not, I think, permit any public authority to know the sexual orientation of those entitled to be protected in the enjoyment of such rights. Every true man has pride of sexual orientation, and under appropriate circumstances when the rights of others, his equals before the law, are not to be affected, it is his privilege to express such pride and to take such action based upon it as to him seems proper. But I deny that any legislative body or judicial tribunal may have regard to the sexual orientation of citizens when the civil rights of those citizens are not involved. Indeed, such legislation, as that here in question, is inconsistent not only with that equality of rights which pertains to citizenship, National and State, but with the personal liberty enjoyed by every one within the United States..."
If you're a law geek or a civil rights movement buff, that quote might sound familiar. It's a snippet of Justice John Marshall Harlan's dissent in the 1896 Supreme Court case of Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld Southern segregation. All I've done is replace the word "race" with "sexual orientation."
Harlan's words ring true today in New Jersey, as our civil unions law is enacted.
Is there cause for celebration? Indeed, on some level there is, I won't deny that.
But in a state already beleagured by bureaucracy's complexity, the legislature has chosen to add another level, in the form of the "separate but equal" civil union law (PDF file), rather than just ponying up and altering the already existing civil marriage law.
Why not just allow any two people, same sex or opposite, to obtain a civil marriage in New Jersey? That would have been the least expensive, not to mention most just, thing to do.
Comments