New Jersey activist sees gay marriage as a question of church and state

by Johanna Ginsberg
NJJN Staff Writer

Shortly after he moved to the New Jersey suburbs from Brooklyn, Steven Goldstein, 42, was outside watering the lawn, wearing black pants, a white shirt, and a yarmulke.

“That was a kind of Modern Orthodox uniform that made me blend in, and someone started talking with me, assuming I was part of that community,” he recalled. “A few minutes later, I introduced my partner, Daniel.”

The neighbor, said Goldstein, “didn’t even flinch, and we kept talking.” It is exactly that kind of experience, along with the results of a recent poll, that leads Goldstein to believe that the prospect of gay marriage in New Jersey is not just a dream.

“This is a wonderful state to be gay and Jewish in,” he told NJJN. In fact, a 2003 poll conducted by Zogby International suggests that 55 percent of New Jerseyans favor gay marriage. (The poll was commissioned by PFLAG — Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.) That’s music to the ears of Goldstein, a Teaneck resident who left his public relations firm in Manhattan to advocate full-time for gay marriage in New Jersey.

Goldstein will speak at the Reform Temple Ner Tamid in Bloomfield on Friday, March 18, on The Freedom to Marry from a Jewish Perspective.

The founder and chair of Garden State Equality in Glen Rock, a statewide political organization supporting gay rights, Goldstein is also a town meeting organizer for Lambda Legal. He has served as a senior staffer to three United States senators, and he wrote or cowrote nine civil rights bills that were enacted into law, including the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, still the only pro-choice statute ever enacted at the federal level. He and his partner, Daniel Gross, were the first same-sex couple to be featured on The New York Times weddings announcements section, in 2002. The couple are still shul-shopping, but Goldstein acknowledged that they are likely to join Bnai Keshet, a Reconstructionist congregation in Montclair.

Goldstein said his talk at Ner Tamid will zero in on what he sees as the nexus between religion and politics now at play in a variety of national issues. “I’m going to be extremely blunt,” he said, in that his talk will focus on “how the Christian Right’s opposition to gay marriage is, in effect, anti-Semitic.”

Said Goldstein: “The Christian right wing wants to impose its values and its view of gay marriage on America. We often hear the Christian right wing say gay marriage is antithetical to religious values. Maybe so for some, but it is chutzpa to try to put the stamp of their own religious values of America at the expense of the values of other religions. Several [Jewish] movements embrace gay marriage outright: Reform, Reconstructionist, and humanistic Judaism — and Conservative Judaism will get there, too.”

(The Conservative movement’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards is scheduled to reconsider the issue of gay marriage this spring.)

“That’s a violation of church and state, something we Jews should be enraged over,” Goldstein said. “Why should the values of one religion take precedence over another...? We Jews should say, ‘Enough is enough!’”

Goldstein said he believes the issue of gay marriage is easier to resolve in New Jersey — “a blue state getting bluer every day” — than in other parts of the country. He is awaiting a decision from the NJ Court of Appeals on a same-sex marriage lawsuit filed in June 2002 on behalf of a gay NJ couple who were refused the right to marry. The couple lost before the lower court judge in November 2003, and the appellate court heard the case in December. Whatever the appellate court decides, the case is expected to be appealed to the NJ Supreme Court, where, Goldstein is hopeful, the couple will win.

“The NJ community has led the way on social issues, and the Jewish community here, though by no means monolithic, is by and large as progressive a Jewish community as anywhere in the country,” he said. “Gay marriage is an issue progressive Jews care about deeply, but it is not particularly at the top of the list of more conservative Jews. Even those who oppose gay marriage care far more about vouchers and eruvs. You rarely hear intense antipathy to gay marriage in New Jersey.”

For more information about Goldstein’s talk at Temple Ner Tamid, contact the synagogue at 973-338-1500.

Johanna Ginsberg can be reached at jginsberg@njjewishnews.com.