The New Jersey Supreme Court, as you know, has left it to our state legislature to establish either civil unions, which would perpetuate a separate, unequal and inferior status for same-sex relationships, or true marriage equality.  The Supreme Court has given the legislature 180 days -- through April 2007 -- to decide which.  Garden State Equality has already secured three legislators to sponsor a 100-percent marriage equality bill, with more legislators to come.

We at Garden State Equality ask you to sign this petition asking the legislature to support the marriage-equality bill, and to reject any civil-unions bill as a substitute.   We will present personally this petition to Governor Corzine and the legislature.  Please provide all the contact information requested. 

As the New Jersey experience has painfully shown, contraptions short of marriage -- like New Jersey's domestic-partnership law and also civil union laws -- don't work in the real world.   Hospitals and other employers have told domestic-partnered couples across New Jersey:  We don't care what the domestic partnership law says.  You're not married.

To ensure that this becomes the biggest petition New Jersey has ever seen, please use the "Tell-a-Friend" link above to forward this e-mail to your family, friends, colleagues and members of your organization and congregation.  

And to strengthen Garden State Equality's fight for marriage equality at this unprecedent time for New Jersey's LGBTI community -- and the millions of straight New Jerseyans who insist on equality for all -- please consider a donation.   DONATE TO GARDEN STATE EQUALITY NOW 

Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,

As you know, the New Jersey Supreme Court is giving the legislature a choice between passing a statute for true marriage equality, versus an inferior civil-unions statute that would perpetuate an unequal status for same-sex couples in New Jersey.

I strongly urge you to support legislation for 100% percent marriage equality and to reject any civil unions bill or other alternative to marriage equality.

I am so proud that New Jersey supports complete marriage equality, including marriage in name, by 56% to 39%, according to a 2006 Zogby Poll.

In New Jersey and in other U.S. states that recognize gay couples -- but do so through creations less than marriage, whether civil unions or domestic partnerships -- hospitals, employers and others have too often said, "We don't care what the law says. You're not married. You can't visit your partner in the hospital. You can't make medical decisions for your partner even if she's incapacitated. You can't do a host of other things we would let married couples do."

As the late Lt. Laurel Hester and so many other cases across our state have demonstrated, all that is happening in New Jersey.

Do gay couples have legal recourse in those situations? Not practically so. If you need to visit your partner in the hospital and the hospital denies you that right because you're not married, what good is years-long litigation, and the high cost in time and money, when the moment to visit your partner has come and gone?

Please understand, I support 100% marriage equality not merely because separate institutions are inherently unequal and therefore immoral. I support 100% marriage equality because it's the only way a gay civil rights law will consistently work in the real world.

Marriage is the only currency of commitment the real world universally understands and accepts.

Please stand for equality. Marriage is equality, and civil unions and other alternatives are not.

I believe this passionately.

Signed by:

Campaign Launched:
August 23, 2006