NJ Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Gay Marriage

Lots of coverage out there. Nutshell: to deny homosexual relationships the same rights are heterosexual unions violates the equal protection requirement of the state constitution. The court is very clear that homosexual unions must be granted all the legal rights as civil marriage, but the legislature can call it whatever they want.

There is no ambiguity that the state must convey equal rights, but they don't have to call it "marriage." If they want to call it "civil union" or "rutabaga," fine. Whatever. Separate in label is not inherently unequal under the law as long as all rights are equal under the law.

NY Times
BBC News
San Francisco Chronicle
Boston Herald
TowleRoad
PageOneQ

I think this closing sentence from Nick Langewis at PageOneQ really drives home the importance of this to people who may be apathetic to, unaware of, or antagonistic to the importance gay marriage rights:

Without a marriage license, civil union or legal paperwork, rights and responsibilities that would otherwise be automatic do not exist; the law may consider even the most committed individuals in a relationship, regardless of duration, to be complete strangers.

The 'conservative' markets/news outlets are not surprisingly, but still disturbingly, covering this very differently. I will not link to them here, but let's just say that FOX news in particular continues to shove their "fair and balanced" slogan into the realm of irony. The headline on the Fox news coverage is that the NJ court "leaves gay marriage rights to legislature." That is so inaccurate it can only be assumed to be deliberately misleading, as if the facts can be altered by saying it isn't so (WMDs anyone?).

From a "news" network with such a blantant conservative agenda who would go so far as to report on Mark Foley as a Democrat--I should not be surprised. A thousand other news outlets managed to write succinct yet accurate headlines. The ledes to Fox articles read that the NJ supreme court has left it to the legislature to decide the rules for gay marriage. While that may be true literally from a point of view, I think that is clearly misleading. The rule is that the government of New Jersey has to grant equal rights to any pair entering into a marriage contract-regardless of their respective genders. What the state wants to call that status and how and if they want to change all the forms up to them. The rights and recognition are required. Only the formalities are up to the legislature.