New Jersey Legislature will fight for marriage equality

Vowing to make a bill legalizing same-sex marriage a priority, the N.J. legislative leaders say they plan to make marriage equality a centerpiece of the new session that begins this week. “It’s going be a fight,” Senate President Stephen Sweeney (pictured) said. “We expect it to be a fight. The governor’s a decent person, and I think we can work on educating him to the fact of what it means.” He doesn’t expect a battle in the new Legislature, but rather with Gov. Chris Christie, who has been a staunch opponent of it. Christie has said he favors civil unions, the current law in New Jersey that was adopted in 2003. But Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a gay rights advocacy group, said civil unions are “failed experiments” because they don’t extend to same-sex couples the same rights held by heterosexual couples.

[via NJ.com]