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New Same-Sex Civil Union Law for New Jersey

Makes it the fifth U.S. state to enact such laws

TRENTON, January 9, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - New Jersey senators voted 23 to 9 in favour of homosexual civil union legislation yesterday. The new bill makes New Jersey the fifth state to enact such laws. New Jersey governor James E. McGreevey is expected to sign the new legislation into law.

The new bill requires insurance companies to offer spousal health care benefits to same-sex "couples," as well as allowing them to make critical medical decisions for each other.

The legislation also extends pension and health coverage benefits to same-sex "couples" employed by the state; the same requirement is not made of private employers - so far.

John Tomicki, the director of the League of American Families, told the New York Times that the New Jersey Senate "Took this bill and jammed it through in lame duck."

The Catholic Conference of New Jersey expressed opposition to the bill in a letter to senators that said "It attempts to cast aside marriage as our legal standard of legitimate cohabitation."

Democrat Raymond J. Lesniak, while noting the Catholic Conference's opposition, took the floor in favour of the bill, saying that he wanted to speak "because I love my church. But on secular matters, on legal matters on relationships between two people, it is not infallible."

A top Vatican theologian criticized last November's Massachusetts Supreme Court decision to formulate a right to same-sex "marriage." Father Gino Concetti, a moral theologian who writes for the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, said: "This is a great wound to human dignity that can never be justified."

Earlier in 2003, the Vatican issued a document reminding Catholics that legal recognition of homosexual relationships was a grave moral disorder and also reminding Catholic politicians that they could never support legislation that recognizes such unions. "This is against the creative plan of God, who made man and woman as two equal but complementary beings not only to love each other but to procreate," Father Concetti said.

Read the LifeSiteNews.com report of the Vatican reaction to civil union and homosexual "marriage" legislation at: http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/nov/031120.html

Read the New York Times coverage of the decision at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/nyregion/09PART.html?ex=1074315600&en=9ff4268d...

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