I Don’t Think We Should Deny People Rights To A Civil Union

by digby

The New Jersey Supreme Court has just held that gay Americans should be accorded the same legal rights as other Americans in a ruling that George W. Bush will support.

“I don’t think we should deny people rights to a civil union, a legal arrangement, if that’s what a state chooses to do so,” Bush said in an interview aired Tuesday on ABC. Bush acknowledged that his position put him at odds with the Republican platform, which opposes civil unions.

“I view the definition of marriage different from legal arrangements that enable people to have rights,” said Bush, who has pressed for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage (search). “States ought to be able to have the right to pass laws that enable people to be able to have rights like others.”

The ruling is also in line with the presumed GOP nominee for president in 2008:

MATTHEWS: But in so many cases in the last president election—the gay marriage issue was used effectively to rally the Christian conservatives to the polls, and it helped bring about the majorities in states like Ohio. You‘re saying that your party has never taken a position adversarial to gay marriage and issues like that?

MCCAIN: On the issue of gay marriage, I do believe, and I think it‘s a correct policy that the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, a marriage between man and woman, should have a unique status. But I‘m not for depriving any other group of Americans from having rights. But I do believe that there is something that is unique between marriage between a man and a woman, and I believe it should be protected.

MATTHEWS: Should there be—should gay marriage be allowed?

MCCAIN: I think that gay marriage should be allowed, if there‘s a ceremony kind of thing, if you want to call it that. I don‘t have any problem with that, but I do believe in preserving the sanctity of a union between man and woman.

He later added:

Could I just mention one other thing? On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe that people want to have private ceremonies, that‘s fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.

The court found no fundamental right to same-sex marriage, but found that unequal dispensation of rights and benefits were contrary to the constitution. That sounds like something old St. McCain, who has flipped flop more than a dying carp on this issue, agrees with.

The NJ legislature will have to find some way to profer equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples. Unless it decides to, the state will not be obligated to perform any marriage ceremonies. They could decide that it’s a simple form that must be filled out and notarized. Churches will have to decide if they want to perform ceremonies or not, just as they do today, and the state has nothing to say about it — just as it doesn’t today. All this amounts to is equality under the law.

Religious people can fight among themselves all they want about what this means, but the state should not be in the “sanctity” business.

sanc·ti·ty

1. Holiness of life or disposition; saintliness.
2. The quality or condition of being considered sacred; inviolability.
3. Something considered sacred.

The state’s job is to insure equality under the law and this ruling properly achieves that.

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