Christie Handing Gays in Jersey a Dirty Deal
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s used to having his cake and eating too. You can watch on the Letterman show and is no doubt about that. Since Hurricane Sandy destroyed parts of Coastal NY and Nj along with the Jersey shore and Atlantic City he came out and ask for help and got the help and all the backing that Pres. Obama could give him. It brought his negatives down, which where high, manly as a bully and stubborn governor hard to work with if he disagreed with you on anything. People saw a more human side of him, he admitted about his weight problem instead of hiding behind it, which he could easily could have done.
Everyone knows that he has been playing political games with game marriage in NJ and gay Nyeseyans have gotten the wrong end of the stick more than once even before he was governor. There was even a governor that convince everyone that the way to go was civil Unions after the NJ Supreme Court rule that gay couples were being discriminated and gave the state a choice. Marriage or Unions but they most be treated like straights. This particular governor went for unions because it was the easiest thing for him knowing full well that it was apples and potatoes. Nothing was similar except they were mostly round. This was Mc Greavy who was outed for cheating on his wife with a male staffer that was blackmailing him, according to McGreavy.
Now comes the republican Christie and he wants everyone to be equal knowing that he can’t have gay marriage because he still with the old idea that this will hurt him. A Northeast State and he is not afraid of the North-easteners, he is afraid of people with tea bags under the eyes who hate everything including the constitution, statue of liberty and everything in between that has to do with the Northeast, gays, gun laws and social security until they start collecting it. What should he care? He want to be Mr. P R E S I D E N t like Marilyn Monroe would say.
Hey but he wants to appear fair because her is not going to win without the folks in the Northeast, like Liberals, Progressives and independents. So He is been watching black jack at the Casino's in Jersey and he thinks he can do a double hand. A bill for gay marriage was passed and he vetoed it. It’s the best for the gays because it should go to a referendum. Don’t you love people that tie up your hands and screw you with a broomstick and ask you if you are having a good time. Christie does. Hey he is good buddies with the gay president. The one quiet about the treatments of gays in Russia.
Christies' administration filed a brief last week defending the state’s 2006 Civil Union Act, which grants gay couples all the benefits of marriage yet bars them from actually getting married. The brief is Christie’s first official legal statement on same-sex marriage. Given his apparent aspiration to be the next Republican nominee for president, it is especially too bad that the brief also may be the most incoherent defense of heterosexual supremacy yet. That’s saying something in an era in which lawyers have tied themselves in logical pretzels to defend indefensible anti-gay laws. Even by that low standard, the brief reads like a student paper written during an all-nighter. You’d think an aspiring president would take the task more seriously.
The Christie brief was filed in state Superior Court, in a suit brought by six couples who sued New Jersey for the right to marry in 2011. After the Supreme Court’s June ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act—the 1996 law that denied federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples—the New Jersey plaintiffs asked the superior court to allow gay marriage in the state to begin right away. They argue that civil unions are inherently unequal now that the Supreme Court has tossed the key component of DOMA. The feds are now granting benefits to gay spouses, but New Jersey’s civil union law prevents gay partners from receiving those benefits.
Christie’s brief defends civil unions in three ways. First, it argues that the state can rationally restrict the label “marriage” to heterosexual unions because it is “preserving” the definition of the word. Second, it contends that it’s actually the feds who are now blocking gay equality by withholding benefits to civil union partners. And third, it claims that the state courts should move very cautiously when contemplating a major change in social institutions—all fine and well except that, as the state itself admits, calling a gay union a marriage isn't much of a change anymore. In fact, throughout the brief, what’s most striking is that every last argument Christie’s administration makes, it then proceeds to blatantly contradict.
Oops, except then it doesn’t. The brief then does an about-face, insisting that the nomenclature distinctions have no meaning at all—an effort to show that the law is not rooted in anti-gay prejudice. A “long-standing precedent,” the brief explains, dictates “that courts look to essence, not label.” It cites a 1915 court case finding that a law’s import “lies in the essential nature of the work done rather than the names applied to those engaged in it.” The brief goes to great lengths to drive home this point, even dragging in the Bard: “Shakespeare wondered what’s in a name?; for purposes of federal criminal law, the answer is ‘nothing.’ Substance rather than nomenclature matters.” And: “A rose by any other name is still a rose.” And: “Counting a dog’s tail as a leg will not give the dog five legs.
As if to illustrate this muddle, the brief proceeds to use the terms “partner” and “spouse” interchangeably, going so far as to argue that the civil union partners the state bars from getting married are nevertheless “spouses.” Indeed, the brief refers to “civil union spouses” in the same breath that it complains that the sovereign state of New Jersey should not be forced to cede the definition of marriage to include gays.
Let’s imagine for a moment that it’s true that nomenclature doesn’t matter a whit. If that’s right, then it’s the strongest case yet for the other side. If there is nothing in the name “marriage,” then New Jersey’s Civil Union Act has no rational relationship to an important state interest. The label is the single distinction the law makes. How can that both serve a compelling governmental interest and mean absolutely nothing, at the same time?
The idea seems to be to further New Jersey’s bizarre argument that it’s the feds who are depriving gays of equality rather than the state. Because the Civil Union Act intended to treat gay and straight couples equally, the brief argues, now that DOMA is dead, the federal government should give civil union partners full benefits “because they are spouses.”
The trouble is, New Jersey did not intend to treat gay couples equally. If it did, it would have actually made them spouses, granting them access to marriage—to the word itself. This is the precise meaning of the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education that separate is “inherently unequal.” Awarding equivalent material benefits does not erase the stigma of separating a class of people from the core institutions of American life.
The contradictions continue: Precedent, says the brief, also requires a court to exercise “maximum caution” in intervening where “highly significant policy considerations” are involved. Therefore the New Jersey courts should not invalidate New Jersey’s law. But the state’s entire position is that there is no policy consideration at issue. There’s no material difference between civil unions and marriage, just a distinction in name only—and names don’t matter. Why shouldn’t the court act, then? Christie isn’t just making an argument against judicial activism here either. When he vetoed a same-sex marriage bill earlier this year, he said the legislature shouldn’t decide whether marriage should include gay unions—only “people” should, by a direct vote at the ballot box. That might be fine for deciding how to fund a town library, but the whole point of constitutional rights is that they’re not subject to a vote.
Can the Christie administration get away with its absurdly twisted logic? In 2009 the Obama administration defended DOMA against a California couple’s challenge. Its brief was so poorly worded and overreaching—it appeared to compare same-sex marriage to incest and pedophilia—that the administration infuriated gay and straight activists alike. The outrage helped push the gay rights movement into overdrive. The Obama administration eventually had the sense to reverse course. DOMA’s demise in June, of course, followed. Luckily for Obama, the president emerged unscathed. If Christie doesn't get smart, he might not be so lucky.
Adam Gonzalez and bottom parts by Slate Magazine
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