N.J. Gov. signs law creating civil unions for gay couples
New Jersey will become the third state - after Connecticut and Vermont - in the US to offer civil unions to same-sex couples when the law goes into effect next year on Feb 19. Same-sex couples will get nearly all the rights and responsibilities of marriage allowed under state law after Gov. Jon S. Corzine signed legislation last Thursday.

The Legislature passed the civil unions bill on Dec. 14 in response to a state Supreme Court order that same-sex couples be granted the same rights as married couples. The court in October gave lawmakers six months to act but left it to them to decide whether to call the unions
"marriage" or something else. The new legislation in New Jersey will not confer the status of "marriage" to same-sex couples.

As expected, same-sex couples welcomed the new law, but many remained lukewarm about the law arguing that not calling it "marriage" creates a different, inferior institution.

The civil unions law grants gay couples adoption, inheritance, hospital visitation and medical decision-making rights and the right not to testify against a partner in state court. They won't, however, be entitled to the same benefits as married couples in the eyes of the federal government because of 1996 law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. A legal expert interviewed highlighted that, as a result of federal law against same-sex marriage, gay partners won't be able to collect deceased partners' Social Security benefits.

The two other states that allow same-sex unions include California which has domestic partnerships that bring full marriage rights under state law and Massachusetts which allows gay couples to marry since the Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that the state constitution guaranteed the right. Anti-marriage groups are however working to get an amendment on the 2008 ballot that, if passed, would end the right to marry.

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Pope slams "dismal" theories on gay marriage rights
Pope Benedict spoke out against according legal recognition to unmarried couples and reiterated his condemnation of same-sex unions at a Christmas address to the Rome clergy on Friday.

Weighing into a raging debate in Italy over what legal rights should be given to unmarried and gay couples, the Pope said granting legal recognition to unwed couples was a threat to traditional marriage, which required a higher level of commitment.

On same-sex unions and gay marriages, he said: "This tacitly accredits those dismal theories that strip all relevance from the masculinity and femininity of the human being as though it were a purely biological issue."

Theories "according to which man should be able to decide autonomously what he is and what he isn't," end up with mankind destroying its own identity, he said.

The speech came as Italy's left of center coalition government prepares a bill to establish civil partnerships and a day after the governor of New Jersey signed a civil unions bill.

In June 2005, the Pope described same-sex marriages as "pseudo-matrimony" in his first detailed critique of gay unions since his elevation to the pontificate six weeks before. Before he became pope, Benedict - then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger - was the primary explainer of Pope John Paul II's oft-stated opposition to same-sex marriage. In 2003, Ratzinger wrote an important Vatican document outlining the church's opposition to same-sex marriage; the document became controversial because of its assertion that ''Allowing children to be adopted by persons living in such unions would actually mean doing violence to these children, in the sense that their condition of dependency would be used to place them in an environment that is not conducive to their full human development.