New Jersey Judge Refuses to Legislate 'Marriage' from the Bench
by Allie Martin and Jody Brown
November 6, 2003
(AgapePress) - Pro-family forces in New Jersey are celebrating a major victory in the fight to preserve traditional marriage.
A superior court judge has dismissed a case in which seven homosexual "couples" were seeking the constitutional right to same-sex marriage. On Wednesday, Judge Linda Feinberg ruled in Lewis v. Harris that New Jersey's constitution only recognized the concept of traditional marriage between a man and a woman.
"The right to marry has always been understood in law and tradition to apply only to couples of different genders," Feinberg wrote. "A change in that basic understanding would not lift a restriction on the right, but would work a fundamental transformation of marriage into an arrangements that could never have been within the intent of the Framers of [New Jersey's] 1947 Constitution."
The judge also wrote that to accommodate same-sex unions under the state constitution "would contradict the established and universally accepted legal precept that marriage is the union of people of different genders" -- and that any change should occur not in the courts, but in the state legislature.
John Tomicki, executive director of the New Jersey-based League of American Families, says Feinberg's decision is clear.
"This judge is really saying to the appellate courts as she views the state law, case law, history, [and] New Jersey constitution, nowhere does it provide for homosexual marriage -- and that the courts should not legislate from the bench," Tomicki says.
A Christian expert on marriage and sexuality points out that the New Jersey ruling is the second in less than a month that affirms traditional marriage. Glenn Stanton, senior analyst for marriage and sexuality at Focus on the Family, says both the New Jersey court and the Arizona State Court of Appeals -- which in October affirmed that marriage is the union of a man and a woman -- acted wisely.
"[The] U.S. Supreme Court has never interpreted our Constitution to guarantee same-sex couples the right to marry," Stanton says. "It is encouraging to see that the New Jersey court has resisted this radical social experiment."
Stanton explains that such experimentation goes counter to centuries of tradition that are consistent with God's plan for marriage. "Every single society in human experience and history has defined marriage as a union between men and women for good reason," he says. "It is only in the last few milliseconds of history that some nations have arrogantly and radically redefined marriage to be something else."
Both the New Jersey and Arizona cases, he says, have brought clarity to the "essential legal nature of marriage."
Ruling Will Be Appealed
Lambda Legal, which represented the seven couples in the New Jersey case, says it plans to appeal the ruling to the state appeals court. Lambda's lead attorney in the lawsuit, David Buckel, says Feinberg's ruling is not a surprise to his group, and that it "propels" them forward to higher courts "where both sides have always known it will be decided."
In typical fashion, Buckel couches his comments in terms that link the homosexual agenda to the civil-rights movement, saying that "seeking freedom has always been on a long road -- and the struggle for [homosexual] marriage is no different." One of the seven couples in Lewis v. Harris is two homosexual men who are Episcopalian pastors from Union City, New Jersey.
