To Me This Is Infuriating

Mayor Cory Booker

January 26, 2012

I’ve got very, very strong feelings about this . . . but dear God, we should not be putting civil rights issues to a popular vote subject to the sentiments and the passions of the day. No minority should have their rights subject to the passions and sentiments of the majority. This is the fundamental bedrock of what our nation stands for.

I get very concerned that we have created a second-class citizenship in our state. That’s what we have in America right now. We have two classes of citizens. Jackie Robinson said that the right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time. Let’s stop the ruse. We have two types of citizens right now in our state: citizens like me, who, if I choose to marry somebody, I can marry somebody.

[I can marry someone] from a different country and they have a right to a United States citizenship. I talked to somebody last night, his spouse is looking to be deported. His spouse is looking to be deported. If I’m [married and I] die, this first-class citizenship that I have says that my wife will get to avoid my estate taxes. The second-class citizens in this country don’t have those rights. There’s over a thousand federal laws that create different classes of American citizenship because we’re not treating everybody equally under the law. I read the Fourteenth Amendment clearly. It talks about “equal protection of the laws.” And that was never something that should go up to a popular vote, whether blacks, women, or other minorities, [all] should be equal first-class citizens. Thank God there wasn’t a popular vote whether Jackie Robinson should become a professional baseball player.

To me this is infuriating that we are in the twenty-first century and we haven’t created equality under the law. And so I will be—fundamentally in the fiber of my being—supportive of equal citizenship for all people in this country, because I know that at the end of the day, I would not be here, my family wouldn’t be able to put food on the table for me, if it wasn’t for that ideal in America.

Don’t just point to [Governor Christie]. 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 position in this country, Latinos having a second-class citizenship in this country, blacks and whites who want to marry having a second-class citizenship in this country [but not overcome second-class citizenship for gay people]. 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.