Christie pledges gay-marriage veto as Democrats push forward
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he would veto a bill to allow same-sex marriage, even as Democrats in the Senate said they have enough votes to pass it.
Christie, a first-term Republican, said he wants voters to consider a constitutional amendment on the issue in November. The debate on gay marriage should happen “in homes, schools, synagogues, churches and ball fields across New Jersey,” Christie told reporters in Bridgewater today.
“The institution of marriage is too serious to be treated like a political issue,” he said.
The Senate Judiciary Committee began debate today on a bill that would make New Jersey the seventh U.S. state to let gay couples marry. Lawmakers in Washington state said yesterday they have the votes to make same-sex marriage legal and Governor Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, has said she’ll sign the legislation.
Supporters in New Jersey, including openly gay assemblymen Reed Gusciora and Tim Eustace, said allowing same-sex marriage is the only way to address inadequacies in the state’s 2008 civil union law. About 200 people attended the Senate hearing.
“We had a referendum on civil rights in the 1920s when the voters of this state voted against a woman’s right to vote,” said Senator Raymond Lesniak, a Democrat from Elizabeth. “We shouldn’t put civil rights up for a referendum.”
Top Priority
Senate President Stephen Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver, both Democrats, said passing the measure is a top priority for their party, which controls both houses of the Legislature.
“This is the time for this,” Senator Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat from Teaneck and a sponsor of the measure, said today in a telephone interview. “It would guarantee equal rights to a large segment of our community that has been denied them up until now.”
Democrats control the Senate judiciary panel 8-5. Passage would ready the measure for a vote in the full Senate. The bill has enough votes to pass the committee and the upper house, said Weinberg and Lesniak, a co-sponsor. Both are members of the Judiciary Committee.
The measure would also need approval from the Assembly, where hearings will be scheduled soon, said Tom Hester, a spokesman for Democrats in the lower chamber.
2010 Effort Failed
Two years ago, Democrats failed to pass a gay-marriage bill, even as then-Governor Jon Corzine, a Democrat, promised to sign it. The measure, which needed 21 votes in the Senate for approval, was defeated 20-14 with three abstaining, including Sweeney. He later said he made a mistake in not voting.
Sweeney’s decision to support the bill this time will bring the needed votes, Weinberg said.
Public support for same-sex marriage in New Jersey reached a high of 52 percent in a Quinnipiac University poll released Jan. 19. The issue had support from 41 percent of voters in a November 2006 poll by the Hamden, Connecticut-based polling institute.