N.J. civil unions law faulted
Panel says rights are not protected
PHILADELPHIA - A new state civil unions law has failed to ensure that same-sex couples in New Jersey have the same rights as married heterosexuals, an official report said yesterday.
On the first anniversary of the law's implementation, the Civil Union Review Commission said some employers in New Jersey have refused to provide benefits to the partner of employees in a civil union.
New Jersey last year became the third state to pass a civil unions law after its Supreme Court affirmed that same-sex couples have the same rights as heterosexual couples, but left the Legislature to decide whether to enshrine those rights in an institution called marriage.
Lawmakers opted for civil unions, to the dismay of activists who argued that true equality can be achieved only by allowing gays and lesbians to marry.
In Massachusetts, the only state to have legalized same-sex marriage, the law prompted many employers to provide equal benefits to same-sex partners, the report said.
The panel of official and legislative appointees established as part of the law attributed the failure of some New Jersey employers to recognize civil unions to a federal law that allows self-insured companies - an estimated 50 percent of all employers in the state - to choose not to offer benefits to same-sex partners.
In addition, the federal Defense of Marriage Act says that any federal statute or regulation that provides benefits to spouses applies only to partnerships between one man and one woman.
Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality, a leading gay-rights group in the state, said about 2,500 New Jersey couples have entered into civil unions since the law was passed, and about a fifth have complained to his group that their unions have not been recognized by employers.
"This report delivers a thousand cuts to the civil unions law," Goldstein said. "For same-sex couples all across New Jersey, the law segregates, discriminates, and humiliates."
Gregory Quinlan of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, a conservative Christian family advocacy group, described the report as a sham that was promoted by gays and their friends. He supports an amendment to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage. 