TRENTON (LifeSiteNews) – New Jersey cities that have not included a “nonbinary” option on their marriage licenses can be penalized up to $10,000, the state attorney general warned Wednesday.
AG Matthew J. Platkin announced that 28 cities received Notices of Violation for allegedly violating the Law Against Discrimination (LAD) for their marriage licenses’ “exclusionary gender options,” claiming that they forced “nonbinary” people to “misgender themselves, under oath, as either ‘m’ (male) or ‘f’ (female).”
The office of the attorney general cited the LAD’s provision that it is “unlawful for a place of public accommodation to display or post any … notice indicating that any of their offerings are unavailable based on a person’s sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or gender expression.”
Platkin’s Twitter announcement of the enforcement action was met with sweeping rejection, with one commentator decrying the policy as “utter nonsense,” since “It is impossible to change your biological gender,” and another remarking, “Since when are we including mental illness diagnosis on marriage forms?”
Some leftists believe, however, that the nonbinary “X” sex marker is insufficient and that gender designation on documents and IDs should be eliminated altogether.
“Seeing people conflate ‘being nonbinary’ with ‘having an X on your ID’ is exactly why fighting for an X on gender markers instead of the abolition of gender markers from official documents entirely was such a mistake. ‘Giving more ways for the state to sort us’ is not liberatory,” tweeted one radical self-described “femme leatherdỳkefæg” wrote on Wednesday.
The Notices of Violation were issued as part of the Marriage Equality Enforcement Initiative, launched in October 2022 by New Jersey’s Division on Civil Rights (DCR).
New Jersey’s AG office explained that so-called “discriminatory language” in marriage licensing “was first flagged in Marriage Equality in New Jersey: A Latina/o/x Perspective.” The July 2022 report was in turn prompted by the finding that the municipality Fairview’s website stated that, “for two persons to establish a Marriage in this State, it shall be necessary” for them to be “of the opposite sex.”
The Notices of Violation contain an “Assurance of Voluntary Compliance” agreement by which cities can “resolve the matter.” It requires that they update their websites to “state that marriage licenses are available to qualifying couples of all gender compositions;” “Provide LAD training on compliance with the written anti-discrimination policy” to all relevant municipal employees; and “Remit to DCR a payment in lieu of penalty.”
The Division of Civil Rights issued citations to Estell Manor, Fairview, Hanover, Linden, and South Toms River in October “for limiting licenses to opposite-sex couples and using language that excludes nonbinary people,” PhillyVoice reported.
U.S. states are increasingly offering “nonbinary” IDs to their residents, with marriage licenses reportedly having lagged behind in paying homage to the nonbinary construct, at least initially.
Twenty-four states now offer nonbinary state IDs to residents, including Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.