I haven’t gotten a chance to read a lot from the hearings in New Jersey, but I wanted to share one thing right off the bat.  The speech of 13 year-old Jessie Petrow-Cohen though, has risen to the top.  Like Philip Spooner before her, she has risen above the chorus of voices and is spreading quickly around the internet.  If video becomes available, I’ll post it.

The only thing that’s different about my family and every one of yours is that we have to stand here and ask you if we can legally be a family, when you can be one without asking anyone. I think that us having to do something like that may just make our love stronger, but it’s gotten to the point where it just isn’t fair.

The full testimony is below the jump.

My name is Jessie Petrow-Cohen and I live with my moms, my sister, my three dogs, our gecko, our hermit crabs, our guinea pigs and our snails in Maplewood, NJ. To me a family is a group of people who love each other and are willing to do anything for one another.

Let me tell you a little bit about my family. Like most families mornings are crazy and one of us will usually leave home without something pretty important. Between walking the dogs and making lunches everyone’s just running around trying to get out the door.

Wednesdays are insane. There’s gymnastics, Hebrew school, usually someone who needs to go to a friend’s house to pick up homework or something like that. And of course we have to get home to watch “Glee.”

We have holidays together with grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles, go on vacations together, and my parents are at every sports competition or game my sister and I have ever had. I tell them everything about school and friends.

I feel that my family is no different. Except for just one thing, in New Jersey where we live together, we are a family, but legally we are not.

When anyone is curious about my family I am glad to tell them. When I told my friends I would be coming here today, they went home and begged their parents if they could come to support me, in fact one of my closest friends, Glynnis Olin, is here with us today.

The only thing that’s different about my family and every one of yours is that we have to stand here and ask you if we can legally be a family, when you can be one without asking anyone. I think that us having to do something like that may just make our love stronger, but it’s gotten to the point where it just isn’t fair.

When I fill out forms in the beginning of the year it says mother emergency number and father emergency number. In fourth grade we were making fathers day cards and even though I don’t have a father the teacher made me write one to an imaginary father, it was crazy.

On back to school night my sister had to write a letter to our parents and was required to follow the format on the board that included “Dear Mom and Dad.” It’s these little things over and over again that set my family apart from being totally normal, because other than the fact that some people don’t want to give my parents the right to get married, we are.

While some of these situations are unfair our friends and neighbors are very supportive and helpful. Last December my house had a very serious fire and the whole community of Maplewood was amazing. People we barely knew offered us a place to stay in their home. For two months after the fire the doorbell rang at 6:00 and delicious home made dinners were brought to us.

People took down our clothing sizes and went out and bought totally new wardrobes. If you’re worried that the people of New Jersey are not ready to accept us I’m here to tell you that they have been for a while.

So please, I would really like to be able to dance at my parents’ wedding. Thank you for inviting me here today.

IF YOU’RE COMING TO THE NEW JERSEY SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE HEARING MONDAY, PLEASE WEAR YOUR EQUALITY T-SHIRTS IF YOU HAVE THEM FROM OUR LOBBY DAYS.  IF YOU DON’T HAVE ONE, WE’LL GIVE YOU ONE FREE ON MONDAY.

This Monday, when the New Jersey Senate Judiciary Committee holds its hearing and votes on the marriage equality bill, please everything possible to join Garden State Equality at 9:00 am at the Trenton Marriott, 1 West Lafayette Street in Trenton.  You can park at the Trenton Marriott.

Several reasons why you should come as extremely early as you can on Monday – joining us at 9:00 am at the Trenton Marriott – rather than wait until the hearing starts at the State House at 1:00 pm.

1.   The entire world will be there to see this piece of history on Monday – you simply have to arrive very early, as if you this were the event of a lifetime for which you’re willing to camp out.

2.   We’ll feed you free breakfast Monday morning at the Marriott.

3.   We’ll brief you Monday morning at the Marriott – that’s key.

4.   If you’re might want to testify on Monday, we’ll have a special briefing – that’s really key.

5.   Be with your extended LGBT and progressive allies family.  We’re all in this together.

6.   We’ll walk from the Marriott to the State House together to show our presence to the press.

Please forward this email right now to every one of your friends, family, work colleagues, organizational members, congregational members and list serv members.   We need the biggest turnout of our lives on Monday.

Any questions?  Call Steven Goldstein, Garden State Equality chair, (917) 449-8918.  Thank you so much – we love you all for helping to bring us this far.  Happy holidays.

Here’s what I do believe after some sleep and a break from the caffeine: we moved the equality ball further up the hill, not just in Maine, but everywhere else. Voters do need these conversations which we had by the tens of thousands; they do need to see real gay and lesbian couples and their children up close and personal; and they do need to be reminded that these are neighbors and soccer coaches we’re talking about, not “homosexual activists” which is the well worn handle our opponents trot out.

I’m not skirting anything here when I suggest that we need to remember that it was not long ago when we were losing in double digits, when they threw an anti-marriage equality question on a ballot in a presidential year to drive conservatives to the polls.

It may turn out to be simply this: that by moving this basic premise of equality from the sink hole of catastrophic defeat state after state, year after year, to within striking distance of a win, that we are almost to the finish line. This tide is turning and you can tell by the histrionics from our opponents, from their “gathering storm.”

It’s not fast enough for most of us, certainly not for the families who deserve the same basic protections my wife, son and I enjoy, but we’re getting close. We will learn more from Maine, we will keep making progress and we will win.

Let no one doubt — least of all our opponents — that we’re in this for the long haul, until all Maine families are treated equally. This has always been much more than another campaign. It’s about love and family and that will always be something worth fighting for.

Read the full piece here.

Catholic Charities, the church’s social services arm, is one of dozens of nonprofit organizations that partner with the District. It serves 68,000 people in the city, including the one-third of Washington’s homeless people who go to city-owned shelters managed by the church.

But here’s the really crazy part.  It’s not because they would have to perform same sex marriages (the bill protects them from that), it’s because marriage equality would mean they couldn’t discriminate against the spouses of gay employees.

Under the bill, headed for a D.C. Council vote next month, religious organizations would not be required to perform or make space available for same-sex weddings. But they would have to obey city laws prohibiting discrimination against gay men and lesbians.

The oddest part here is that the Church has had no issue taking funds from the city council they are now trying to blackmail.

From 2006 through 2008, Catania said, Catholic Charities received about $8.2 million in city contracts, as well as several hundred thousand dollars’ worth this year through his committee.

“If they find living under our laws so oppressive that they can no longer take city resources, the city will have to find an alternative partner to step in to fill the shoes,” Catania said. He also said Catholic Charities was involved in only six of the 102 city-sponsored adoptions last year.

I have nothing against individual Catholics, but I’m developing a real issue with the Catholic Church.  The fact that they’d close churches in Maine while giving over half a million dollars to take away the rights of committed gay couples and use completely underhanded and deceptive techniques is appalling.  People reacted more harshly against the Mormon Church in the wake of Prop 8, and I think that the Catholic Church hasn’t seen the same public outcry because of their status as being a bit more mainstream.

What can you do?  Write an email to the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington.  Their email addresses are freely available online, but to save you a step, I’ve included a list  of leadership below (conveniently separated by semi-colons) if you want to share your feelings:

tburnford@adw.org; dcc@adw.org; jenzler@adw.org; koconnor@adw.org; kdempsey@adw.org; cnoguchi@adw.org; sgibbs@adw.org; chancery@adw.org; communications@adw.org; mfisher@adw.org; mscott@adw.org; abosnick@adw.org; mmcginnity@adw.org

Ninety years early, Maine sent mixed messages about extending voting rights to women, before finally doing so. After the Legislature strongly endorsed women’s suffrage in 1917, a people’s veto took back those voting rights. Two years later, however, Maine voters changed course and voted to ratify the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which extended the right to vote to women.

Imagine putting up a right and an actual set of protections for your family to the vote of your neighbors.  It’s absurd that it happens, and I’d lie if I said I am anything other than crushed that it was done to me and we lost.

I don’t doubt that we’ll win our equal rights in my lifetime, but today I’m at a loss for words to express my condolences to families who will actually suffer at this lack of fundamental equality.

The woman who misses seeing her wife on her deathbed because she doesn’t have the right paperwork or the hospital worker simply doesn’t recognize the strange legal maneuvering that was meant to protect both halves of this couple.

The child who isn’t protected when their biological parent dies and the other parent they’ve known their whole life struggles to claim this child as their own.  But this isn’t about just situations involving death.  It’s about the lives we lead and the way we feel about ourselves and the way that a child of a gay couple feels about his or her family.

More than that, I’m sad that bigots and those who judge me without knowing me feel their bizarre, self-righteous and often hypocritical, beliefs have been validated and approved by their neighbors. For the teenagers who took this vote to mean there is something wrong with their gay classmates. That it’s alright to insult and push around. For the teens who continue to live in fear because they just heard that the majority of Mainers don’t think they deserve the same rights as their brothers and sisters and friends.

We’ll win this. If nothing else, I’m personally more committed to that now. You better believe this issue hasn’t been put to bed, because until gay couples are allowed to commit to each other equally, we’ll commit with even more energy to ensuring our equal rights. I’m ready to do what it takes, and I know that the hundreds of thousands of voters who agree will step up again to help. Equality knows no election year and loss number 31 won’t beat the fight out of us.

It’s as simple as this: domestic partnerships don’t carry the same rights as civil marriage.  It’s a simple fact provable by the laws of the state of Maine.

Call (trainings are starting next week).