Civil unions are meant to accomplish two goals. It provides certain states rights without marriage and it provides the DLC like Corzine with political cover since the DLC nominee, whomever he or she may be, will be pro-civil union and anti-marriage. The polls tell them that marriage will defeat them, so justice doesn't have the requisite votes to support equality and liberty and justice for all….yet.

I'm not ready to register for a Jersey paper just to read the whole article. Does it ever spell out exactly how civil unions don't measure up?

They don't give any actual examples, just acknowledge that couples are being denied benefits that they would get if married – which is not what was intended. The NJ courts originally said same sex couples should be given ALL the rights etc of marriage, but said it didn't need to be called marriage. Unfortunately, as we expected, it hasn't worked out like that, and many couples are not getting the benefits they are legally entitled to, and others are legally being denied benefits because of technicalities in wording.

The NJ Civil Union Review Commission recently completed a series of hearings to determine whether civil unions were working in NJ. The FREE transcripts of those hearings are available online at http://www.nj.gov/lps/dcr/curc.html#transcript

I encourage everyone to read for yourself the stories of dozens of same-sex couples whose civil unions were not recogonized by employers, hospitals, and even some government offices!

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we can't rely on civil unions, domestic partnerships or anything other than marriage to protect our families.

I've been making an effort to talk to the people in my life about why the freedom to marry is so important to the LGBT community. The Let California Ring campaign has a lot of useful resources on their site: http://www.LetCaliforniaRing.org

If we can open the hearts and minds of people in key states like New Jersey and California, we can really make a difference!