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As New York prepares to rule on the topic of same-sex marriages, New Jerseyans must begin to confront that we, too, will soon be called on for our opinions on same-sex marriage.

The issue of same-sex marriage must be met on two levels. On one level, we must consider the rights marriage would afford gay couples. The other level is to examine the language of the word "marriage" altogether and discuss its significance as a term.

Currently, New Jersey offers civil unions to same-sex couples, which offer "marriage-like" rights.

So what does that mean? Essentially, it means that any of the federal benefits enjoyed by married couples -- of which there are more than 1,000 -- are withheld from same-sex couples because recognition of a civil union does not extend past a state's borders. Moreover, if a couple with a civil union goes to a state that does not offer civil unions, their status is not recognized by the state they are visiting.

Let me put the latter part of that explanation into different terms. Imagine that a same-sex couple from Massachusetts wants to visit a beach in Florida, and during that trip, one party of this couple is seriously injured and needs hospital care. The partner of the injured individual would not have the same visitation rights as other married couples in Florida, because their union is completely unrecognized by Florida law.

If couples are willing to get a civil union, aren't they are committed companions and deserve to be recognized as spouses? Certainly, I will not argue that marriage is not a matter of the state, but it has been found, through the issue of gay marriage and civil unions, that the federal government has a paramount impact on the rights and responsibilities of couples in wedlock, influencing everything from the ability to file taxes jointly to being recognized as a valid family unit in states that do not offer civil unions.

This realization deserves to be met by the federal government with action to attempt to equalize the gap between gay and hetero couples through granting federal benefits to same-sex couples with civil unions. Without this equalization, the government is not only condemning civil unions to being a pitiable version of marriage, but they are sending a message that they will not help to support same-sex couples who want to be in serious, committed relationships.

Largely thanks to the presence of civil unions, we as a country are at a point of recognizing that gay couples are around, willing to fight for equal rights, and capable of entering committed relationships. The idea that the federal government could ignore or wait out the advent of openly homosexual couples is fantastical at best and, at worst, grossly discriminatory.

Aside from establishing equal rights for hetero and same-sex couples in a legal sense, there is also the linguistic issue of the word "marriage" being used for same-sex couples. Opponents of same-sex marriage will often argue that granting gay couples with marital status would desecrate the sanctity of the term marriage, destroying the traditional image of marriage in our culture.

Conversely, same-sex marriage proponents will argue that unless same-sex unions are granted marital status, those unions will not be taken seriously, and the linguistic rift between marriage and homosexual unions is just another way to discriminate against gay couples looking for serious, loving relationships no less real than those of their heterosexual counterparts.

So, should all couples, heterosexual and homosexual, be given the same right to join in holy matrimony? Absolutely not -- in fact, no one married by civil law should be considered married. Matrimony, after all, is a word derived from a religious context.

Instead, legal ceremonies sanctioning a status of wedlock should be defined appropriately across the board as civil unions, because that is exactly what they are.

Along the same line of thinking, if clergymen wish to perform marriage ceremonies for any combination of genders, the term "marriage" is entirely called for. This is not to say that heterosexual and homosexual couples alike, who have not gone through religious ceremony in their unions, should not be able to call themselves married. Socially, I hardly think that the term marriage would allow itself to be swept away from secular couples due to its current role in our everyday language.

However, the government should start getting serious with itself about the separation of church and state and cease using the term "marriage" for heterosexual couples, which would put homosexual and heterosexual couples on the same level, legally as well as linguistically.

Additionally, this move away from a marital title would support the idea that religious institutions should have the freedom to perform their marital ceremonies on an individual community level. This separation of language would ensure that one institution's ceremony would have no effect on that of any other, eliminating such conflict.

The position the government holds concerning marriage is to encourage committed, stable, responsible relationships in society and reward those relationships with a myriad of benefits and rights. Protecting the "sanctity of marriage," however, is the duty of the clergy and the clergy alone.

Sari Rovinsky is an intern at The Jewish State, and is currently pursuing a degree in creative writing from Warren Wilson College, N.C.