When gay marriage became legal in New Jersey Monday morning, Newark Mayor and senator-elect Cory Booker stepped up to the plate to celebrate 'a great moment for our state and for our country.'
Joe Epstein/APPaul Somerville (left) and Allen Kratz leave Hoboken City Hall after applying for a marriage license Saturday. They have been together since 1985 and are planning their ceremony for later this week.
Cory Booker, who you better believe is going to be somebody to watch when he gets to Washington, was first on his way back to City Hall in Newark early Sunday evening, finally ready to officiate at some weddings while he was still mayor of that city, ready to do that first thing Monday morning when gay marriage became legal in New Jersey.
Three lesbian weddings for Booker, two with gay men, two straight, in the first-floor rotunda, full of marble, on Broad St., the old place never having seen a night - or morning - like this.
'I've refused to preside over any kind of wedding in seven years as mayor,' Booker said. 'If I couldn't treat every citizen equally, I just wasn't going to do it. It would be an affront to the principles I believe in.'
Booker, African-American senator-elect as of last Wednesday, then said, 'I wouldn't be where I am if people before me didn't stand up for the same principles and ideals about how we're all supposed to be equal in this country under the law.'
RELATED: CORY BOOKER PRESIDES OVER WEDDINGS FOR FIRST TIMEBooker said he expected a couple of hundred people in the rotunda at midnight, said it was going to be some party. Said he had just gotten 'under the wire' with his ability to officiate at weddings, that senators don't have the right, that he was running out of time before he stepped down as mayor in a matter of days.
'I'm being honest when I tell you it's going to be hard keeping my emotions in check,' Booker said. 'This isn't about me, this is just a great moment for our state and for our country.'
Here is what Chief Justice Stuart Rabner of New Jersey's Supreme Court wrote on Friday in a decision upholding a lower court order allowing gay marriage in his state, thus denying the delay that Gov. Chris Christie had sought as part of a bad, dumb, losing game:
'The state has advanced a number or arguments, but none of them overcome this reality: Same-sex couples who cannot marry are not treated equally under the law today. The harm to them is real, not abstract or speculative.'
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In that moment, Rabner sounded as smart and good and tough as any judge at any level, with a clear understanding that this is not an issue that is somehow the province of a close-minded Catholic Church, or even a governor like Christie who hasn't acted like a real leader on this issue for five minutes, but rather someone following thinking out of the past.
This fight has gone on a long time in New Jersey, Cory Booker right in the middle of it from the time people started paying attention to him, long before he made it to the Senate. It has been a fight in state courts and in the state Legislature - but everything picked up a big head of steam earlier this year when the U.S. Supreme Court took elements of a federal law that had prevented the government from recognizing same-sex unions and folded those parts of the law into paper airplanes.
So it has become time for Jersey to join the 13 other states in the union that recognize gay marriage. Because for the last time: This isn't about religious doctrine, no matter how much small-minded people tell you it is, or something cynically tied to political ambition. It is about fairness and honor and dignity and the rights Cory Booker spoke about Sunday night, in Jersey and everywhere else.
The fight is not over, of course. There are still votes needed in the state Legislature to override Christie's veto of a marriage-equality bill that previously ended up on his desk, a bill that wouldn't be subject to the whims of future courts.
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But if enough lawmakers continue to act about as enlightened on the issue of marriage-equality as the Tea Party, then they will not just look small-minded. They will look small in all ways, and mean, and intolerant.
It would all start with the governor, a year after he looked like a giant to his constituents - gay and straight - in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy.
Could the Supreme Court of New Jersey change its mind on this later if the state stubbornly continues to appeal, remain on the wrong side of history, and fairness, and even decency? Sure it could. But ask yourself something: Why would it want to? Thinking like that doesn't eat away at the state's famous coastline the way Sandy did. Just its soul.
'Been waiting a long time for this moment,' Cory Booker said.
New Jersey gets smarter now, and better. New day, crack of midnight Monday morning, party at the mayor's house, Broad St., Newark.
Posted by Unknown on Monday, October 21, 2013 - Rating: 4.5
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