Chris Christie Continues To Defend Comment Linking Gay Marriage Referendum To Civil Rights

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is still clarifying a comment he made last Tuesday linking a possible gay marriage referendum in the state to the civil rights movement.

"The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South," he said last Tuesday. Christie favors a ballot referendum for gay marriage, while Democratic leaders in the Assembly and Senate have pledged to pass a gay marriage bill.

"The political climate in the South didn't give them the option to have a referendum back then," he said Monday at a press conference in the statehouse, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. "They wished they would have had the option, but the political climate did not permit it, meaning they would not win."

Christie said "numbnuts like [Assemblyman] Reed Gusciora should be ashamed of themselves." Gusciora, who is gay, compared Christie to segregationist Govs. Lester Maddox and George Wallace.

Christie added that African-American leaders he met with earlier understood his comments weren't meant to offend.

Christie's comparison has drawn sharp criticism.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who is African-American, said that he wouldn't have had the same opportunities if civil rights had been put to a vote. "Frankly I wouldn't be where I am today. So it seems to me just sad," he said Thursday on WNYC to Brian Lehrer. "This is not about a choice. It's about a fundamental right, and the 14th Amendment is very clear. It says, 'equal protections under the law' and right now in America we have second-class citizenship set up where certain Americans can have privileges that certain Americans do not enjoy, and that is just wrong."

Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said the governor needed a "history lesson."

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), who was chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on "Bloody Sunday" in 1965, when marchers were beaten by state and local police, strongly objected to Christie's comparison. "We would never have won [with a referendum]," he said Monday in Trenton, according to PolitickerNJ. (Christie said he'd be willing to meet with Lewis.)

"If two women or two men want to get married, that is a question of human dignity and of human rights," said Lewis. "The day will come when people look back at this and say 'we were just silly.'"

UPDATE: Christie apologized for his comments Tuesday night. "But listen what I will say as long as we're on this topic is I also recognize that my job, one of my jobs as Governor, is to clearly communicate to people what I'm thinking, every time I open my mouth. And I try to be very good about being very direct about what I say so that there's no ambiguity but obviously when I was talking last week at the town hall meeting about the civil rights movement in the South, I wasn't clear enough. I just wasn't," he said. "And what I did was, by saying those things, I left them open to misinterpretation and obviously there are some folks out there whose feelings I hurt or sensibilities I offended. And I apologize for that, because that's my job. My job is to clearly communicate all the time. And so to those folks out there who were somehow offended or concerned about the ambiguity in my statement, I apologize for that because very clearly what I was trying to say, I said yesterday at the press conference about 5 or 6 times."

Related on HuffPost:

Comments

[Fred Moore Jr]

10:41 PM on 05/23/2012

Sorry, that should have been "he could have been clearer" instead of "more clear."

[Fred Moore Jr]

10:40 PM on 05/23/2012

O K, I'm not a Christie fan, but I get what he said and it was not offensive. Clearly his words were misunderstood and, clearly, he could have been more clear about what he intended to say. It's tough having a microphone and camera in your face every day.

[drego99]

03:04 AM on 02/18/2012

The right to free speech, to express ones opinion, is one of the many rights guaranteed to all citizens by the United States Constitution and the Bill Of Rights. To allow ones right to free speech to be put a public vote is prohibited by these most honorable documents and the idea strikes at the very heart of our nation. The US Constitution and the Bill Of Rights also guarantee all our citizens Due Process and Equal Protection under law. The Due Process clause is clear that fundamental rights cannot be denied or taken away. The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly held that marriage, like free speech, is a fundamental right. The issue here is whether selected American Citizens, due to their sexual orientation, can be denied the "fundamental right" to marry. Contrary to Christie's beliefs, Constitutional mandated fundamental rights cannot be put to a public vote. The Bill of Rights purpose is to insure to all citizens fundamental rights are protected against infringement by those with differing ideas. Gay and lesbian citizens are the same as every other American citizen, The have the same desires, the same aspirations and the same needs. They want to be respected equally and they simply want the right to marry the person they love and the one they choose to share their lives with. Equality - Simple equality, nothing more and nothing less.

[drego99]

02:49 AM on 02/18/2012

“The Supreme Court has said that: Marriage is the most important relation in life. It is the foundation of society. It is essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness. It’s a right of privacy older than the Bill of Rights and older than our political parties. One of the liberties protected by the Due Process Clause. A right of intimacy to the degree of being sacred. And a liberty right equally available to a person in a homosexual relationship as to heterosexual persons. That’s the Lawrence vs. Texas case. Marriage, the Supreme Court has said again and again, is a component of liberty, privacy, association, spirituality and autonomy. It is a right possessed by persons of different races, by persons in prison, and by individuals who are delinquent in paying child support. It is the right of individuals, not an indulgence dispensed by the state, to favored classes of citizens which could easily be withdrawn if the state were to change its mind about procreation. In other words, it is a right belonging to each citizen, to persons. It is not a right belonging to the State. And the right to marry, to choose to marry, has never been conditioned on or tied to procreation. It hardly could be rooted in the state’s interest in procreation, since the right to marry, in Supreme Court cases, has been invoked sustaining the right to contraceptives, to divorce, and just a few years ago in that Lawrence case, to homosexuals.”

[Hugo Stiglitz1]

05:58 PM on 02/11/2012

NO TOUGH GUY HERE
http://starcasm.net/archives/122416

[cleylol]

04:02 PM on 02/05/2012

I sure do hate when people equate being gay with being black, though. It's two different things completely.

[RepublicanDepression]

05:48 PM on 02/05/2012

And yet the GOP (Greedy One Percent) has an ongoing history of discrimination against both.

[drego99]

11:31 AM on 02/18/2012

3/24/2004 Coretta Scott King, the widow of Martin Luther King Jr. called gay marriage a civil rights issue, denouncing legislation that would ban it. Laws should be used to expand freedom, not restrict it, Coretta Scott King said Tuesday. "Gay and lesbian people have families, and their families should have legal protection, whether by marriage or civil union," she said. "Legislation banning same-sex marriages is a form of gay bashing and it would do nothing at all to protect traditional marriages."

[drego99]

11:24 AM on 02/18/2012

"I still hear people say that I should not be talking about the rights of lesbian and gay people and I should stick to the issue of racial justice. But I hasten to remind them that Martin Luther King Jr. said, 'Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'" "I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to make room at the table of brother- and sisterhood for lesbian and gay people," Coretta Scott King - Wife of Dr. Martin Luther King.

[RepublicanDepression]

10:09 PM on 02/01/2012

More proof that when the GOP (Greedy One Percent) say "people" they mean bigots.

"The fact of the matter is, I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South," he said last Tuesday.

A "referendu¬m" would FAIL because Blacks were unconstitu¬tionally forbidden from voting. So the only "people" who would prefer that are BIGOTS!

Proved!

[Jai Hro]

12:58 PM on 02/01/2012

Gays get slaughter just as folk of color do..gays deserve the same right to Marriage as anyone else in America does. They were born with rights just like the rest of us.

[Rambrewster]

02:47 AM on 02/01/2012

A person who just cannot admit that he made a mistake and cannot apologize is a very scary person to have in a position of power.

[Jai Hro]

12:59 PM on 02/01/2012

I feel sorry for his children...lord knows what he would do if one were gay.

[Rock Biologist]

11:08 PM on 01/31/2012

"Don’t just point to the governor – we had the chance to do this under the last governor, and we didn’t have the courage to stand up and do the right thing. So I'm tired and exhausted that we have a country that has been able to overcome women having a second-class position in this country, blacks having a second-class citizenship in this country, latinos having a second-class citizenship in this country, blacks and whites who wanted to marry having a second-class citizenship in this country. It’s about time we create first-class citizenship for every American, plain and simple. Every New Jerseyan. This should not be a popular vote. This is something we should do now... to me it's ridiculous and offensive that we're still having this debate in Trenton. It should have been done months, if not years ago.”

-Cory Booker, Mayor of Newark

http://youtu.be/Y4Z7tl7Vy8U

[almchrl13]

10:22 PM on 01/31/2012

Christie is more the battered and deep fried nuts.

[Rteefact]

10:00 PM on 01/31/2012

Is there an address to send him some bacon.

[NJmikeV]

09:56 PM on 01/31/2012

Snookie Christie gives New Jersey a bad name.

[HymnsToSilence]

09:32 PM on 01/31/2012

Mr Christie is laying the foundation for his 2016 presidential run. Conservatives love him and love this kind of 'shoot first and often' performance. He would be happy to lead the mud-slinging crowd and he knows he is a front-runner for the baton. Do not count him out and keep your good eye on him. He is in full campaign mode and relishing the attention.

[SamEllison]

08:56 PM on 01/31/2012

Bubbles just doesn't get it.