New York Times Supports Lambda Legal's Case for Freedom to Marry in New Jersey

The New York Times supports Lambda Legal's case for the freedom to marry in New Jersey and agrees that limiting same-sex couples to civil unions creates "obvious inequality." Oral arguments in court this morning.

From the New York Times:

Despite polls that show broad public support for allowing same-sex couples to marry, New Jersey, to its great shame, has refused to follow the example set by other states in the Northeast — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont — in granting marriage equality.

A civil rights suit to be heard on Thursday in a New Jersey state court could finally change that. Brought on behalf of six couples and Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s largest gay rights group, the case squarely addresses an urgent legal question for New Jersey that grows out of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in June that ended the unjust denial of federal marriage benefits for married same-sex couples under the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

It has long been clear that civil unions under New Jersey law — a status that relegates same-sex couples to a category inferior to marriage — fails to meet the standard of equal rights for same-sex couples established by the New Jersey Supreme Court in a 2006 decision. Under the State Constitution, the court ruled, “committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples.”

Read the full article here.