New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has said "I won't!" to any legal appeals to block gay couples from saying "I do!" in the Garden State.
His decision is both pragmatic and calculating, determined but also disappointing.
Marriage as defined between a man and a woman is a sacrament which has withstood thousands of years of opposition. One should worry if voters can overturn this institution with a vote, or courts with a legal judgment. The statistics prove that most homosexuals do not marry, and activists among them have used the gay marriage argument as a means of effecting the validation of their marginal lifestyle.
While determined and calculating (to ensure reelection in a Democratic state which supports gay marriage two-to-one), Christie's pragmatism is also disappointing, to a degree. He opposes gay marriage in principle, and he shared in his second debate with Democratic candidate Barbara Buono that he would counsel his children not to marry if they declared that they were gay.
But with the legal challenges to the current New Jersey statutes on marriage, Christie had the perfect opportunity to move marriage out of the sphere of government influence altogether. Rather than define marriage as a government contract, voters and governors throughout the country should restore the foundations of marriage back to our churches and communities. Marriage was a private matter one hundred years ago, so no shift in policy could be more conservative, as well as pragmatic and respectable, than divorcing the government out of "I do" altogether.