WTFNJ?

by: Jon Galluccio

Thu Aug 04, 2011 at 08:15:34 AM EDT

WTFNJ?
Where's the Freedom?
By, Jon Holden Galluccio
On a beautiful summer Sunday, we had the opportunity to attend a rally in Hoboken sponsored by Garden State Equality and Lambda Legal to raise our voices in protest. For as our brothers and sisters were getting legally married across the river on that gorgeous summer day, we here in New Jersey are still denied the right to marry. So we asked, "Where's the Freedom?" or just "WTF?"
Lambda was there to announce their latest lawsuit "Garden State Equality vs. the State of NJ...." But WHY DOES THERE HAVE TO BE ANOTHER LAWSUIT? Didn't the Supreme Court of NJ already rule in favor of equality. Of course they did, but they left it in the hands of cowards to enact it and so instead of marriage equality we got Civil Unions. So even though most of the legislators will admit that civil unions did not bring marriage equality to the lgbt community we still have to fight and file a lawsuit to get it changed.
Now, if the Supreme Court of NJ told me to do something and I didn't, wouldn't that be a violation and wouldn't I be charged, held responsible in some manner? Why can't we make a citizen's arrest of all of those in Trenton that ignored the Supreme Court the first time around? I can't imagine breaking the law and so easily getting away with it but isn't that exactly what happened here and continues each and every day we don't have marriage equality. Maybe if we just held each and every one of them responsible for their actions things might change a little quicker down in Trenton.
My kids get it and it's all about freedom. We, the lgbt community, are not free. We are not protected, we are second class. My daughter saw this last year and asked if she could stop saying the Pledge of Allegiance because "freedom and liberty for all" was a lie. We said yes as we don't say it ourselves (we can talk about this another time). What's important here is that why is it taking so long and costing so much when we all know that eventually we will have the freedom to marry but until then I'll just scratch my head and ask WTF?
JON HOLDEN GALLUCCIO, AUTHOR OF "AN AMERICAN FAMILY" WITH MICHAEL GALLUCCIO AND DAVID GROFF, IS A FINANCIAL SERVICES REPRESENTATIVE WITH METLIFE. HE RESIDES WITH MICHAEL AND TWO OF THEIR CHILDREN IN NORTH HALEDON.

Jon Galluccio :: WTFNJ?

Tags: marriage, Garden State Equality, Lambda Legal, Galluccio, (All Tags)

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WTFNJ? | 1 comments

I'm not sure, but... (0.00 / 0)

...I don't think that there was any mechanism in the original Supreme Court decision to review the legislative remedy chosen by the legislature to determine if it was sufficient or not after a certain period of time. Whether or not such a mechanism exists, I think that any reasonable observer of both the judicial and legislative processes surrounding this issue would agree that the legislature abided by the original court decision.

That said, Jon, you and your family have every right to be angry about the status quo, but your anger should not be limited solely to the legislature. The fact that marriage equality does not exist today is the fault of a weak original court decision, a cowardly legislature, AND an advocacy community that was unwilling or unable to do what was necessary to force the legislature to do the right thing, including but not limited to threatening to organize credible primary challenges against any Democratic legislator who voted against marriage equality and promising support for any Republican legislator who voted for marriage equality against any primary challenge that he/she faced as a result of this vote.

There may be good reasons why the marriage equality advocacy community did not do this when they had the opportunity to do so in 2007 and there may also be good reasons why State Senator John Girgenti was the only legislator who voted against marriage equality to experience any payback for this vote, but I have not yet read any of these good reasons here or anywhere else.

As far as pleding allegience to a flag and/or the republic for which it stands goes, I think that there were plenty of very good reasons to not do this well before marriage equality became an issue and there will probably continue to be very good reasons to not do this after marriage equality not only becomes the law of the State of New Jersey, but the United States of America as a whole.

I would hope that if you are educating/encouraging your children to take this kind of stand right now, while you are most definitely being treated like second-class citizens, you will continue to educate them as well as you are doing right now, even after you have been given the freedoms and rights that you and other families like yours most certainly deserve, because there is no doubt in my mind that even after you are given the same freedoms and rights as so many others in our country, there will still be other families who are living here who will still be treated like second-class citizens in other ways and for other reasons. Please remember to stand up for them in the same way that I and others have been standing up for you and others.

by: Bertin Lefkovic @ Fri Aug 05, 2011 at 15:57:32 PM UTC