Saturday, January 10, 2004
A Bird's Eye View of NJ Legislative History
January 10, 2004
Domestic partnership legislation has been working its way through the NJ legislature for months. It passed in the Assembly by one vote on December 11th. It squeaked out of committees and made it to the Senate for a vote yesterday. In order to pass, it needed 21 yes votes. It got 23.
There had not been a lot of press coverage about the bill. Maybe it's because interested people in New Jersey are more focused on the legal challenge for marriage equality, similar to the recent case in Massachusetts, which is simultaneously working its way through the court system and would provide a fuller complement of rights and protections. In some ways it seemed that both supporters and decriers of the legislative measure had decided that we'd done all the talking we needed to do, and that more public foment wasn't going to change anyone's mind. Just hold the vote quietly and get it over with.
But members and supporters of New Jersey's gay and lesbian community have been following the bill closely, and some of us made our way to the Statehouse yesterday to watch history unfold.
Visitors -- many of them first-timers -- were ushered to the second-floor gallery, which looks directly down on the bowl of the legislative chamber. Senators trickled in and took their seats, stopping to chat with each other informally on the way. The session started at 2:00pm with the Leader going through a slew of "consent agenda" items at breakneck speed. Up in the gallery, political organizers from the gay and lesbian community handed out "YES! 2820" stickers to anyone willing to wear one. By 2:30pm, the vast majority of folks crammed into the second-floor gallery were clearly identified as supporters of the domestic partnership legislation. Strangers spoke quietly to their neighbors, wondering what they'd heard about this Senator or that one; everyone waited anxiously for S2820 to be called. I passed out Howard Dean's "Common Sense" brochures to some interested folks, and my friend Heidi and I tried to keep our toddlers from throwing their toys at the heads of the nice gay men in front of us. A couple of bored policemen appeared. (The kids wanted to know if they had cars with sirens on them.) Print and television journalists hovered around the edges of the still-growing crowd.
Finally, around 3:30pm, the Speaker called the chamber to order to consider bill S2820 and asked if any Senator wanted to speak to the matter at hand. The gallery took a collective breath. Five Senators asked for time, and then, one after the other, they all spoke in favor of the bill.
(If you live in NJ, and your Senator is Barbara Buono, John Adler, Byron Baer, Raymond Lesniak, or Robert Martin, you've got yourself a good one.)
No one on the floor spoke against the bill. For weeks, we've been reading anti-gay letters to the editor in our morning paper here, and no one in the media was predicting an easy victory. You could see and feel the bill's supporters steeling themselves for what felt like an inevitable attack. But it never came. Afterwards, there were a few folks from those creepy so-called "pro-family" organizations who talked to reporters, and some legislative types who expressed concerns about potential costs (which I like to call the "we're all for equality, as long as it doesn't cost us anything" position), but that was pretty much it.
After the second set of positive floor remarks, the 100-plus supporters in the gallery burst into spontaneous cheering and applause. The Speaker gavelled us down into silence and gently asked us to be quiet while the bill was still being debated.
The vote itself was tallied on a giant electronic scoreboard that was hung roughly at eye-level with the gallery. Having watched many of the afternoon's earlier votes pass with 35 yeas and no nays, it was nervewracking to watch the votes tick up in both categories for this vote. At the end of the vote, the tally was 23 yeas, 9 nays, and a bunch of absentions (which don't show up anywhere on the scoreboard). Gov. McGreevey has promised to sign the measure quickly, and when he does, New Jersey gay and lesbian couples will have rights to medical visitation and decisions, some inheritance rights, health coverage if they work for a state agency (including the state's public colleges and universities), access to the state pension plan, and changes to the NJ tax code to reflect domestic partnership status. New Jersey will be the fifth state to recognize domestic partnerships, joining California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
The yes tally hit 21, then 22, then 23. The woman on the floor of the Senate who had been reading out the business of the day grinned up at us, reflecting back our joy. We cheered and hugged each other and jumped around. A few people cried quietly. Then everyone took out their cellphones and started making calls. Honey, you'll never guess what we just got...
January 10, 2004
Domestic partnership legislation has been working its way through the NJ legislature for months. It passed in the Assembly by one vote on December 11th. It squeaked out of committees and made it to the Senate for a vote yesterday. In order to pass, it needed 21 yes votes. It got 23.
There had not been a lot of press coverage about the bill. Maybe it's because interested people in New Jersey are more focused on the legal challenge for marriage equality, similar to the recent case in Massachusetts, which is simultaneously working its way through the court system and would provide a fuller complement of rights and protections. In some ways it seemed that both supporters and decriers of the legislative measure had decided that we'd done all the talking we needed to do, and that more public foment wasn't going to change anyone's mind. Just hold the vote quietly and get it over with.
But members and supporters of New Jersey's gay and lesbian community have been following the bill closely, and some of us made our way to the Statehouse yesterday to watch history unfold.
Visitors -- many of them first-timers -- were ushered to the second-floor gallery, which looks directly down on the bowl of the legislative chamber. Senators trickled in and took their seats, stopping to chat with each other informally on the way. The session started at 2:00pm with the Leader going through a slew of "consent agenda" items at breakneck speed. Up in the gallery, political organizers from the gay and lesbian community handed out "YES! 2820" stickers to anyone willing to wear one. By 2:30pm, the vast majority of folks crammed into the second-floor gallery were clearly identified as supporters of the domestic partnership legislation. Strangers spoke quietly to their neighbors, wondering what they'd heard about this Senator or that one; everyone waited anxiously for S2820 to be called. I passed out Howard Dean's "Common Sense" brochures to some interested folks, and my friend Heidi and I tried to keep our toddlers from throwing their toys at the heads of the nice gay men in front of us. A couple of bored policemen appeared. (The kids wanted to know if they had cars with sirens on them.) Print and television journalists hovered around the edges of the still-growing crowd.
Finally, around 3:30pm, the Speaker called the chamber to order to consider bill S2820 and asked if any Senator wanted to speak to the matter at hand. The gallery took a collective breath. Five Senators asked for time, and then, one after the other, they all spoke in favor of the bill.
(If you live in NJ, and your Senator is Barbara Buono, John Adler, Byron Baer, Raymond Lesniak, or Robert Martin, you've got yourself a good one.)
No one on the floor spoke against the bill. For weeks, we've been reading anti-gay letters to the editor in our morning paper here, and no one in the media was predicting an easy victory. You could see and feel the bill's supporters steeling themselves for what felt like an inevitable attack. But it never came. Afterwards, there were a few folks from those creepy so-called "pro-family" organizations who talked to reporters, and some legislative types who expressed concerns about potential costs (which I like to call the "we're all for equality, as long as it doesn't cost us anything" position), but that was pretty much it.
After the second set of positive floor remarks, the 100-plus supporters in the gallery burst into spontaneous cheering and applause. The Speaker gavelled us down into silence and gently asked us to be quiet while the bill was still being debated.
The vote itself was tallied on a giant electronic scoreboard that was hung roughly at eye-level with the gallery. Having watched many of the afternoon's earlier votes pass with 35 yeas and no nays, it was nervewracking to watch the votes tick up in both categories for this vote. At the end of the vote, the tally was 23 yeas, 9 nays, and a bunch of absentions (which don't show up anywhere on the scoreboard). Gov. McGreevey has promised to sign the measure quickly, and when he does, New Jersey gay and lesbian couples will have rights to medical visitation and decisions, some inheritance rights, health coverage if they work for a state agency (including the state's public colleges and universities), access to the state pension plan, and changes to the NJ tax code to reflect domestic partnership status. New Jersey will be the fifth state to recognize domestic partnerships, joining California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
The yes tally hit 21, then 22, then 23. The woman on the floor of the Senate who had been reading out the business of the day grinned up at us, reflecting back our joy. We cheered and hugged each other and jumped around. A few people cried quietly. Then everyone took out their cellphones and started making calls. Honey, you'll never guess what we just got...
Monday, January 05, 2004
Thanks, Renee, for helping me figure out how to make the links active!
