New Jersey "Leads" the Way

Unfortunately, the leadership is precisely toward the sewers.

For the first time, a religious organization in New Jersey is being punished by the government because it refused to permit same-sex civil union ceremonies on its property.

Despite its historic nature, this officially sanctioned discrimination against a religious group did not require a special act of the legislature or ruling of the court to accomplish. A state bureaucrat, one Lisa Jackson (the state commissioner on environmental protection), quietly sent a letter informing the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist organization, that the pavilion it owns on the beach is no longer eligible for exemption from state real estate taxes. (The Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association also remains the target of a state investigation into whether it has violated the state's anti-discrimination laws by refusing to permit same-sex ceremonies on its property.)

In a way, I'm both surprised and gratified at the Methodists' stand here.

HT: Paul