Writing at Slate.com, Nathaniel Frank, author of Unfriendly
Fire, describes New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's legal
opposition to gay marriage as “nonsense.”
Frank calls a recent brief filed by the Christie administration
defending the state's 2006 Civil Union Act “the most incoherent
defense of heterosexual supremacy yet.”
“You'd think an aspiring president would take the task more
seriously.”
The case involves six gay couples who are challenging the state's
law limiting marriage to heterosexual unions. It was filed in 2011
under the claim that civil unions fail to satisfy a 2006 New Jersey
Supreme Court ruling declaring that gay couples are entitled to the
same rights and benefits that married heterosexual couples enjoy.
After the Supreme Court in June eviscerated a key provision of the
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), requiring that the federal government
recognize the legal marriages of gay couples, lawyers for the
plaintiffs moved for summary judgment, asking the judge to skip a
trial scheduled for later this year and issue a ruling.
“What's most striking” about the brief, Frank
writes, “is that every last argument Christie's administration
makes, it then proceeds to blatantly contradict.”
Frank zooms in on the “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.”
“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?”