As you may have seen via Freedom to Marry's coverage here at OpenLeft (you can see their posts so far here and here), National Organization for Marriage is taking their "Summer for Homophobia Marriage" tour nationwide. Today, they were in New Jersey, and as part of their response, Garden State Equality put together this video demonstrating how civil unions haven't worked in New Jersey:
One person commented to me that if civil unions aren't working, then why is the LGBT community supporting them (and for my part, why am I doing things like blogging on the Hawaii civil unions law that Gov. Lingle just vetoed, or asking folks to help approve Referendum 71 in Washington State last fall, which would protect the state's same-sex domestic partnership law?)? In other words, why work for "half-measures"?
The answer is two-fold. First, what happens in New Jersey is not the same as what happens in Washington State, or what may happen in Hawaii. In fact, what doesn't work in one part of New Jersey may not even be the same as what works in another part, e.g. a hospital administrator accepting civil union papers in one county while an employer rejects them in another. That's not to say what Garden State Equality is saying- that civil unions aren't working for New Jersey couples and families- isn't true. It is, and I said that when I was blogging about the marriage equality legislation moving through the New Jersey legislature last winter. We still need marriage equality to protect all couples, so couples in allcounties are equally protected. The point here is that civil unions aren't working for New Jersey right now.
The second issue is that if you ask couples in Hawaii if they'd rather have civil unions and the rights that come with them tomorrow or marriage equality in a few years, many would take civil unions, even with its problems. When I think about whether or not to engage in these kinds of campaigns, for me in the end, it all comes down to what would be best for those who are most affected by a law. Give-and-take over whether to reject civil unions and hold out for marriage are always important, but at the end of the day, we're still talking about people's medical rights, health insurance, burial rights, and more. If that's what's best for same-sex couples in Hawaii and it's the best move to make strategically, then half-measure or not, that's what works for me.
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