Mar 07, 2008  |  By: JOSHUA LYNSEN  | COMMENTS     

Steven Goldstein remembers once touting civil unions as “a big step forward” for gay couples.

But one year after New Jersey enacted the option and inadvertently triggered a host of unforeseen problems, the chair of Garden State Equality told Maryland legislators they can do better.

“I’m here to tell you today that the New Jersey civil union law is a disaster,” he said. “It is not working like marriage. It is proving that civil unions are no compromise. Civil unions do not provide all the rights and benefits of marriage simply without the name. Civil unions are not a major step forward.”

Speaking last week before a state House committee, Goldstein said that granting same-sex couples the ability to wed is the only effective way to empower them.

“Marriage is the only currency of commitment that the real world consistently accepts,” he said. “Opponents of giving same-sex couples the right to marry are right about one thing: Marriage as an institution has been around for thousands of years. And that’s how long it will take for civil unions to be respected as marriage — thousands of years. And same-sex couples are suffering.”

The Feb. 28 testimony came as Maryland lawmakers debated bills to enact civil unions or marriage rights for same-sex couples. Alternatively, legislators could send to voters a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex unions.

Goldstein noted that New Jersey’s civil unions law, which a government report recently noted creates a “second-class status” for gay couples, is effectively inaccessible to members of the armed forces who are gay.

“Civil union, because it is a category reserved for gay people, means that gay couples who enter civil unions are outing themselves,” he said. “So we have in New Jersey — this is heartbreaking — same-sex couples where one member is not even getting a civil union because he or she is afraid to out himself or herself under the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy.

“How ironic that somebody who is giving his or her life to this country in the military can’t even get the rights of second-class status, civil unions.”

Goldstein also said that civil unions are having a “devastating effect on children” who now perceive their parents and family as lesser.

“Children are coming home from school in tears because their friends are asking, ‘Why aren’t your moms married? Why aren’t your dads married?’” he said. “And the kids, who understand, are so impressionable. They’re asking their parents, ‘Why are we different? Why are we inferior?’”

Legislators divided

Several state legislators last week joined Goldstein in calling for marriage equality.

Del. Benjamin Barnes (D-Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties) said lawmakers should not let a civil rights advancement be derailed by people who posit that marriage was created by God.

“If that’s your belief, that’s great,” he said. “But it can’t be denied that God didn’t give you the right to your partner’s pension benefits. God didn’t give you the right to visit your loved one in the hospital. Government did that through a civil institution called civil marriage. And that’s what this bill addresses — civil marriage. Not religious marriage. Civil marriage.”

The Religious Freedom & Civil Marriage Act, which would make valid marriages of same-sex couples, also makes clear that churches may continue to choose whom to marry.

Del. Heather Mizeur (D-Montgomery County) said the measure would remedy the problem she and her longtime female partner face — that they are “legal strangers to each other” — and rightly confer more than 400 state benefits.

“You don’t have to like us,” she said. “You don’t have to invite us to dinner with your family. You don’t even have to respect us and our relationship. But we do expect you to treat us equally under the law. There’s no place for discrimination in the Maryland that I love.”

But other legislators, such as Del. Don Dwyer (R-Anne Arundel County), spoke against the proposal.

He said despite the measure’s attempt to make marriage a purely civil issue, lawmakers “can’t separate religion out of the foundation” of American law.

“And if we search long and hard and deep enough, we recognize clearly that what we’re attempting to do on the issue of marriage is not socially acceptable, it’s not morally acceptable and it’s not acceptable in the eyes of God,” Dwyer said. “Now that’s not to say that I’m passing judgment on anybody, because I won’t do that.”

The comment elicited chuckles from the House Judiciary Committee’s audience, momentarily halting Dwyer before he continued.

“You all can laugh if you want,” he said. “I would ask for some respect.”

Dwyer said ...