Corzine Nonstatement

From the AP:

New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine will not approve legislation banning gay marriage if the state’s highest court rules that such unions are legal, a Corzine spokesman said Thursday.”

There’s no point to that statement; it’s meaningless. The New Jersey Supreme Court won’t rule on whether same-sex marriage is legal; it will rule on whether a ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional. If the court says such a ban is unconstitutional, there’s nothing the legislature can do about it. Corzine is basically saying that he wouldn’t do something that he wouldn’t be constitutionally permitted to do anyway.

And it’s too bad the governor is personally opposed to same-sex marriage.

It’s also too bad the governor appointed a machine Democrat to fill his old Senate seat, one who’s fighting a harder-than-expected contest to retain a Democratic seat in a Democratic-leaning state (although he’s gaining ground, which is good, because if the Democrats win just enough seats to take back the Senate, only to lose the New Jersey seat, heads will roll), and it’s also too bad the governor’s budget cuts made me lose my job, but that’s neither here nor there…

At any rate, a decision in the New Jersey marriage case is expected by October 25.

Sullivan on Foley

On the Mark Foley scandal and the Republican Congressional leadership, Andrew Sullivan writes:

There is something deeply sick about a Republican elite that is comfortable around gay people, dependent on gay people, staffed by gay people–and yet also rests on brutal exploitation of homophobia to win elections at the base. These public homophobes, just like the ones in the Vatican, may even tolerate gay misbehavior more readily than adjusted gay people do. If you treat gay sex in any form as a shameful secret to keep concealed, the line between adult, consensual contact and the sexual exploitation of the young may not seem so stark. That’s how someone like Speaker Dennis Hastert could have chosen not to know: He was already choosing not to know Foley was gay. In this way, Hastert is a milquetoast, secular version of Cardinal Bernard Law.

For non-New Republic registrants, I’ve posted the complete column after the jump. I’m skeptical of what he says about the Log Cabin Republicans, but other than that he makes some good points.

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