TRENTON, N.J. — The New Jersey Supreme Court issued an order Monday rejecting a recently filed motion in a long-ago-resolved lawsuit that attempted to force New Jersey legislature to redefine marriage. Lambda Legal attorneys represented a small group of activists who were dissatisfied with civil unions implemented by the Legislature in 2007, and recently argued that they were not content with anything short of forcing a redefinition of marriage on all New Jersey residents. However, this latest order won’t likely be the end of this legal attack on marriage in the Garden State.

“There’s more to marriage than just any two people in a relationship,” said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. “We should be strengthening marriage, not tearing it down, and the Supreme Court of New Jersey did the responsible thing by denying activists’ attempt to make marriage something other than one man and one woman. This already-resolved, three-year-old lawsuit was resurrected with the goal of forcing legislators to redefine marriage against their will. Such attacks utterly dispel the myth that civil unions will appease same-sex “marriage” activists, who seek to use them as a legal springboard to redefine marriage.”

The New Jersey Supreme Court rejected Lamda Legal’s recent motion to resurrect the lawsuit Lewis v. Harris, which was already decided by the New Jersey Supreme Court in October 2006. In that decision, the court gave the Legislature the option to “either amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex couples or enact a parallel statutory structure by another name, in which same-sex couples would not only enjoy the rights and benefits, but also bear the burdens and obligations of civil marriage.” Monday’s order noted that the information provided by the Civil Union Review Commission, which advocate the imposition of same-sex “marriage” in New Jersey, failed to support that the court should radically change marriage in the state by judicial decree.

“The ACLU and its allies are building a nationwide record of hypocrisy and deception that is very difficult to ignore,” said ADF Senior Counsel Brian Raum. “They know, we know–everyone knows–that civil unions are only a means to an end for the homosexual agenda, and this is just the latest of many examples. Their goal is to impose a radical change in marriage that Americans have rejected every time we’ve had a chance to decide the issue, as evidenced in 30 states voting to adopt state constitutional amendments protecting marriage.”

In December 2006, legislators complied with the order by choosing the latter option and enacting the Civil Union Act, which became effective in February 2007. ADF attorneys filed a motion to intervene on behalf of three New Jersey legislators in March, which the court denied when the suit was dismissed. In January the state Legislature affirmed marriage, and a same-sex “marriage” bill was voted down in New York last December.

An attempt to give civil unions the same benefits and rights as marriage in Hawaii was vetoed this month by Gov. Linda Lingle, and domestic partnership demands in Washington State and Nevada will likely be rejected, as well, not to mention recent a civil union push in Montana. The Proposition 8 case in California and the recent Massachusetts ruling against the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) are other examples of homosexual activists forcing their agenda upon the general populace.

• ADF defense of marriage legal information Web site

ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith.  Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.

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