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For Immediate Release
December 22, 2006
NEWARK, N.J. - The ACLU of New Jersey praised the actions of state legislators and the governor for passing critical civil rights protections in a sweep of legislation advanced over the past week. The governor's December 21 signing of the civil union bill topped off a week of legislative successes that included advancement of a bill to protect transgender people from discrimination and the signing of a bill to allow for the provision of clean needles in several cities.
"New Jersey has once again proven itself one of the most progressive states in the nation," said Deborah Jacobs, ACLU-NJ Executive Director. "Our leaders have made tremendous steps toward equality in our great state this week."
New Jersey overcame decades-long resistance, based on unfounded fears, and adopted needle exchange programs in as many as six cities, becoming the very last state in the nation to allow drug users access to clean needles without a prescription.
Atlantic City and Camden are expected to start the state's first legal needle-exchange programs sometime within the next three months. Health advocates have lobbied for needle exchange for 15 years. They support needle exchange as a major tool in combating the spread of the AIDS, HIV and hepatitis C viruses. In New Jersey, unlike almost all other states, the sharing of needles among drug addicts is the leading cause for the spread of AIDS.
In another first, on December 14, the New Jersey Assembly followed the Senate's lead to pass a bill to outlaw discrimination against New Jersey's transgender citizens. The new law will add a citizen's "gender identity or expression" as a basis for protection under the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination. With overwhelming support, the combined vote in the two chambers was an historic 100-to-10, a 10-to-1 margin that is the largest margin in American history by which a state legislature has passed a transgender equality law. It now awaits the governor's signature to become law.
Finally, New Jersey became the third state in the nation to establish a civil union system designed to afford gay and lesbian couples the full rights and responsibilities that heterosexual married people enjoy.
The civil union bill signed by Governor Corzine is as a major step toward ensuring that gay and lesbian couples receive equal treatment. Gay and lesbian couples will now have access to hundreds of critical family protections. However, the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, and the gay community of New Jersey, will continue to press Trenton to allow gays and lesbians access to the same system that heterosexual people have access to: marriage.
"Civil unions are a temporary fix," said Deborah Jacobs, Executive Director of the ACLU-NJ. "We are going to keep pressing until same-sex couples and their families have access to the dignity and respect that only comes through marriage."
Governor Corzine said, "Many gay and lesbian couples in New Jersey are in committed relationships and deserve the same benefits and rights as every other family in the state."
The civil union legislation follows a unanimous decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court holding that it is unconstitutional for the state to bar same-sex couples from the hundreds of family protections the state provides through marriage. The court gave the Legislature 180 days to either amend existing marriage laws or create some other system to give same-sex couples the same marriage protections under the law.
The legislation signed today also will create a three-year study commission to decide whether the state should allow gay marriage.
New Jersey joins Vermont and Connecticut in establishing civil unions for same-sex couples. California provides for comprehensive domestic partnerships, which are similar to civil unions. Same-sex couples are able to marry in Massachusetts, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands and South Africa.
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