Republican candidate issues statement after aide claims he wants same-sex marriage ban
Jack Ciattarelli’s senior advisor seemingly pledged to ban same-sex marriage. (Getty)
Jack Ciattarelli's senior advisor seemingly pledged to ban same-sex marriage. (Getty)
A candidate to be governor of New Jersey has contradicted an aide’s claim that he “wants a ban on same-sex marriage”.
During a campaign rally on Monday (20 October), a senior advisor to Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli said “we want to have a ban on same-sex marriage”.
Introducing Ciattarelli to the stage, the advisor told supporters that the former member of the New Jersey General Assembly would vote to repeal marriage protections in the Garden State, if elected. “Family comes into place when a man and a woman gets married, not the same sex,” the aide said. “We oppose same-sex marriage.”
But Ciattarelli, who faces Democrat Mikie Sherrill at the polls next month, insisted in a post on X/Twitter that he supported equal marriage, although he did not deny the aide’s claim at the rally.
However, he voted against marriage equality in 2012, three years before it was encoded under the case of Obergefell vs Hodges. A year later, he voted to ban so-called conversion therapy.
In 2021, during a previous run for the governor’s mansion, he voted against allowing trans people to change their gender markers on birth certificates and supported a similar bill two years later. Both sets of proposed legislation were reportedly vetoed by then governor Chris Christie.
“I feel lucky [our children] are in their twenties and I don’t have to be dealing with what you’re dealing right now,” Ciattarelli said at the time. “You won’t have to deal with it when I’m governor, we’re not teaching gender ID and sexual orientation to kindergarteners.”
During his recent campaign, Ciattarelli has voiced support for policies that out New Jersey students, and suggested he would censor LGBTQ+ curriculum in schools, which he said “goes too far”.
New Jersey ‘deserves better’
The Human Rights Campaign has condemned the comments made by Ciattarelli’s aide. The charity’s director of national campaigns, Reg Calcagno, said New Jersey “deserves better” than to lose marriage equality.
“It’s no surprise, this is who Jack has always been,” Calcagno told PinkNews. “That’s why we’re doing everything possible to ensure that Mikie Sherrill is elected the next governor.”
Polling suggests US representative Sherrill is inching ahead in the race, and fhe former naval officer branded the aide’s comments “homophobic”.
PinkNews has contacted Jack Ciattarelli’s office for comment.
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