New Jersey Court On Gay Unions: Everyone Deserves Equal Rights

Another step on the inevitable road to gay marriage...

AP: NJ court stops short of gay marriage OK

New Jersey's Supreme Court opened the door to gay marriage Wednesday, ruling that homosexuals are entitled to the same rights as heterosexuals, but leaving it to lawmakers to legalize same-sex unions.

The high court gave lawmakers 180 days to rewrite marriage laws to either include same-sex couples or create a new system of civil unions for them...

Kudo to the Garden State. I want full-on, official marriage (not this separate, but equal 'civil union' crap), but this is certainly a good start. Marriage will come in time.

Money quote from the official ruling: "Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process."

The only remaining question is whether this issue is still considered controversial enough (or even relevant enough) to rile up conservative voters the way it did in 2004. Bob Menendez certainly hopes not. Of course, Massachusetts has had full-on legal gay marriage for 2.5 years and, much to the dismay of people like Pat Robertson or Rick Santorum, the apocalypse is not upon us. So maybe (with wars, a massive deficit, falling wages, jobs moving overseas, global warming, etc), it's not such a big scary deal for a democratic society to allow two gay adults to marry each other, no?

UPDATE: The cultists at National Review are freaking out. They want to know if Democrats will "defend" marriage. It's amazing; these people talk about gay marriage with the same fear that surrounds their discussions about 'islamofacism'. They are also hoping for a backlash, if only because smearing Michael J. Fox is not as fun as a 2004 redux of gay marriage Chicken Little-ing. Kathryn Jean Lopez leads the way.

UPDATE #2: The "values voters" (whatever that means anymore) take the bait. Whose love would Jesus protest?