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TRENTON, N.J. - Under pressure from New Jersey's highest court to offer marriage or its equivalent to gay couples, the Legislature voted Thursday to make New Jersey the third state to allow civil unions.
Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine said he would sign the measure, which would extend to same-sex couples all the rights and privileges available under state law to married people. The bill passed the Assembly 56-19 and the Senate 23-12.
"Love counts," Democratic Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, a chief sponsor of the bill, said as the debate opened. "The gender of whom one loves should not matter to the state."
But Republican Assemblyman Ronald S. Dancer said: "It's my personal belief, faith and religious practice that marriage has been defined in the Bible. And this is one time that I cannot compromise my personal beliefs and faiths."
Massachusetts is the only state to allow gay marriage. Vermont and Connecticut have civil unions, and California has domestic partnerships that work similarly.
Among the benefits gay couples would get under New Jersey's civil unions bill are adoption rights, hospital visitation rights and inheritance rights.
Gay rights advocates welcomed the legislation as a step forward but said they would continue to push for the right to marry.
The bill was drafted in response to a landmark New Jersey Supreme Court ruling in October that required the state to extend the rights and benefits of marriage to gay couples within 180 days. The court, in its 4-3 ruling, left it up to the Legislature to decide whether to call such unions "marriages" or something else.
Gay rights groups have argued that not calling such unions "marriage" creates a different, and inferior, institution.
Steven Goldstein, director of the gay rights advocacy organization Garden State Equality, said he expects gay couples to be able to get married in New Jersey within two years.
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NEW YORK (AFP) - Gay rights activists said that New Jersey's move to permit same-sex unions left them still "inferior" to married couples, but welcomed it as progress toward equality.
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On Thursday the state legislature voted to allow same-sex unions but not full-on marriage, following a state supreme court ruling two months ago that preventing same-sex unions was unconstitutional.
Gay activists gave a qualified welcome Friday to the decision.
David Buckel from gay marriage law firm Lambda Legal said that although it marked a step in the right direction, stopping short of allowing marriage still deprived gay couples of full equality.
"Although same-sex couples in New Jersey are better off today than yesterday, they are still not equal to other couples," he said in a statement.
"By passing a law that marks same-sex couples as inferior, the government has paved the way for others to discriminate against them.... Their relationships will likely continue to be disrespected," he said.
The state's highest court in October ruled that gay couples have the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts and that preventing same-sex unions violated the state constitution.
The court gave the state legislature six months to decide whether to amend the marriage laws or create a new framework for same-sex unions.
"Denying rights and benefits to committed same-sex couples that are statutorily given to their heterosexual counterparts violates the equal protection guarantee" of the constitution, the court said in its ruling.
It said that while it did not find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage existed in the state, same-sex couples did not enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts.
"The unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our state constitution," it added.
Groups opposed to gay marriage condemned October's decision, saying radical activists had convinced the court to hold a gun to the head of the legislature.
Although the US Congress recently voted down a proposal for an amendment to the US constitution that would ban gay marriage, 45 of 50 states have laws that limit marriage only to opposite-sex couples.
Massachusetts is the only US state that currently permits gay marriage while Vermont allows "civil unions" between same-sex couples.
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