Church Group Complains of Civil Union Pressure

An Ocean Grove church group is suing New Jersey, saying that the state is pressuring it to allow a civil union ceremony for a lesbian couple at its oceanfront pavilion, thereby violating the group’s First Amendment rights.

The suit, filed electronically with United States District Court on Saturday, comes after the group, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association, turned down a request in June by Harriet Bernstein and Luisa Paster of Ocean Grove to hold a civil union ceremony in the Boardwalk Pavilion on Sept. 30. The couple subsequently filed a discrimination complaint with the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights against the Camp Meeting Association, a Methodist organization that owns the pavilion and all the town’s land.

“We’re trying to get the federal court to issue a declaration of the rights the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting possess,” said Brian Raum, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a family and church rights legal organization that is representing the Methodist group. “We feel they have the right to use their facilities for functions that are consistent with their beliefs.”

Following up on the complaint by Ms. Bernstein and Ms. Paster, the Division on Civil Rights, part of the state attorney general’s office, began an investigation. By opening a case file, the association’s suit claims the state has violated the church’s First Amendment rights “by subjecting this patently religious entity to an illegal investigation and threat of prosecution under the law,” and causing a chilling effect on the group’s rights to “unfettered religious expression, association and free exercise of religion.”

Lee Moore, a spokesman for the attorney general’s office, called the lawsuit “premature” since findings from the inquiry have yet to be issued.

“The Division on Civil Rights has a duty to investigate any charges of discrimination filed with it, and the agency does so in response to nearly 1,300 formal complaints a year,” Mr. Moore said, adding that his office’s attempts at mediation between the parties had been unsuccessful.

The crux of the argument will rest on the definition of the building in question.

An open-air structure that faces the ocean, the Boardwalk Pavilion is used for Sunday worship services, which are typically attended by 500 to 600 people throughout the summer, and for daily Bible classes. Situated on the Boardwalk in Ocean Grove, a busy Monmouth County beach town, the pavilion is also used by members of the public, who regularly sit on the pews to rest or get out of the sun. The building had been used for wedding ceremonies until recently.

Shortly after the civil union law took effect on Feb. 19, the group stopped offering the pavilion for weddings in large part to avoid potential conflicts, Scott Hoffman, the church association’s chief administrative officer, said yesterday.

“Just because of its location, it doesn’t necessarily look like a church in the traditional fashion, but it is,” Mr. Hoffman said.

But those who consider the pavilion a public place argue that the Methodist group is out of line in blocking these ceremonies.

“This is public property by virtue of its public use for many decades,” said Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a gay rights advocacy group.

Stuart Rabner, who was then the attorney general, specified in a letter offering advice on applying the rules for New Jersey’s civil union law that those who regularly performed marriage ceremonies may be compelled to perform civil unions under the state’s antidiscrimination laws, but that clergy members could decline if performing such ceremonies would conflict with “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

According to a charter granted by the state in the 1870s, all of the land in Ocean Grove, a mile-square section of Neptune Township, as well as the Boardwalk, the beach and 1,000 feet into the ocean is owned by the Camp Meeting Association.

In recent years, Ocean Grove has also become one of the state’s most gay friendly communities and the two populations have coexisted peaceably. But with the filing of the lawsuit, and the Camp Meeting Association’s hiring of the Alliance Defense Fund, some gay activists see that relationship changing.

“By enlisting one of the most radical groups in the country to represent it, the Ocean Grove Camp Meeting Association has declared war not only on New Jersey’s gay community, but on the progressive values of millions of people in this state,” Mr. Goldstein said.