Same-Sex Marriage and Advocacy

Last week was very important in New Jersey’s fight for same-sex marriage instead of civil unions. As you’ve probably read in our Dec. 10 newSWire, the NJ Civil Union Review Commission released their report and announced their unanimous decision that civil union law has failed to provide equality. The Commission deserves a round of applause for recognizing this face and making it official.

Advocacy in Action

Advocates have been saying this for a while, and now those in power are saying it too. Civil unions are just not enough. Employers refuse to offer health insurance to civil union partners, some hospitals don’t allow visits or let partners make medical decisions, and many people have no idea what a civil union is. But everyone knows what marriage is and we need to give everyone the benefits of marriage.

On another topic, related to the first: Advocacy. It is a term we use regularly in the profession, but we like to share examples of it when we can. Here are a few:

• Mass use of technology and voices: one of our staff members attended a town meeting recently in which everyone in the meeting was asked to take out their cell phones and call a list of legislators. At the moment, using scripts as our guides, 200-something people jammed the voicemails of legislators with an important and friendly message.

• Support a cause with a click of a button: many causes make it easy to send letters to legislators, using fill-in-the-blanks to add your information, like this one for marriage equality: http://eqfed.org/campaign/FinalCommissionReport.

• Repeatedly making the effort to get your clients the services they deserve: those phone calls, letters and in-person attempts (and successes!) are vital to our profession and our clients.