Garden State Patriot

New Jersey appears to be poised to be the next major battlefront in the ‘war’ over gay marriage. This from the AP:

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) — A commission has concluded that New Jersey legislators should allow gay couples to marry, setting up what could be a spirited debate over whether the state should be the first to allow gay marriage by passing a law, rather than by court mandate.

In its final report, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, the state’s Civil Union Review Commission concluded that the state’s two-year-old civil union law doesn’t do enough to give gay couples the same protections as heterosexual married couples.

“This commission finds that the separate categorization established by the Civil Union Act invites and encourages unequal treatment of same-sex couples and their children,” the report says. The findings of the commission’s 13 members were unanimous.

Not surprisingly, the makeup of the commission has been called into question by pro-life advocates.

Gay marriage opponents criticized the report, saying the commission was made up of members who favored gay marriage and calling its recommendations predetermined.

“If you look at the membership of that committee, they’re all advocates. It’s an advocacy group,” Pat Brannigan, the executive director of the anti-gay-marriage New Jersey Catholic Conference, said Tuesday. “It doesn’t mean that that is the conclusion that society and people in general will come to.”

Steven Goldstein, the commission’s vice chairman and the chairman of Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s leading gay rights group, said that while there are some activists like him on the commission, it was a diverse group.

Six of the 13 members are members of the Corzine administration, which Goldstein points out went to court in 2006 to oppose gay marriage. The other seven are members of the public, including one Goldstein described as a “pro-life Republican,” AnnLynne Benson of Clementon.

Benson, who confirmed that she is Republican and opposes abortion, said Tuesday that her views about gays have evolved over the past 15 years or so as she has met more gay people. She said the point of the commission was not to wrestle with whether the state Supreme Court was right to allow civil unions in 2006, but whether the unions delivered on their intent.

Consider me a skeptic and a cynic, because I find the Mr. Goldstein’s defense of the commission membership hard to believe. And whenever I hear that a Republican, let alone a self-proclaimed pro-lifer, has ‘evolved’ in their views my antennae go way up.

But the bottom line is this: we now have a a recommendation from a state commission (bogus or not) that gays be allowed to marry – because they somehow conclude that their civil rights are being violated. I think I must have missed that part of the state constitution that said we all have a right to life, liberty and the right to marry someone of the same sex.

I will strive to have more on this issue in the coming days because it’s time to provide some real perspective and education on the matter. In the meantime, traditionalists in New Jersey need to start organizing and making their voices heard in opposion to gay marriage legislation.