Source: Newsday
(with additional material from Garden State Equality)
MOUNT LAUREL, N.J. - Two liberal New Jersey groups are debuting pro-gay-marriage television commercials tonight.

Garden State Equality and Blue Jersey are running the spots on News 12 New Jersey.

The ads will run for two weeks -- longer if the groups can raise money to keep them on the air.

The ads are the most public part yet of a campaign to persuade the state's lawmakers to allow gay couples to marry.

New Jersey already allows same-sex couples to enter civil unions.

But gay rights advocates say they don't offer enough protections.

The commercial “Busy Family,” which can viewed on YouTube is described by Garden State Equality as "a cinema verite-style portrait of a real-life same-sex couple at home with their two kids."  As the couple feeds their kids, President Bush is seen on a television in their living room, delivering a speech to Congress about his belief that committed same-sex couples should be banned from marriage.

As the scene unfolds, so, too, does text on the screen: “Mike and Jeff missed the president’s speech on protecting the American family.  They were too busy being one.  Support the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.”

Whitney Pillsbury, creative director at the New York ad agency The Kaplan Thaler Group, is producer of the commercial and portrays one of the parents in "Busy Family".

"I wanted to show just how normal -- and American -- a same-sex family is," Pillsbury said.

He and his partner were featured with their three children in a New York Times article earlier this year on how civil unions are failing to provide equality for same-sex couples in New Jersey.

The other commercial “Think Equal,” produced by Jack Bohrer and Juan Melli for Blue Jersey, a leading progressive blog. It is also available on YouTube.

The commercial features two women friends, one of them married and the other one in a civil union, talking about what seems, at first, to be the similar rights they’re each accorded under New Jersey law.

Garden State Equality describes it:

As the conversation continues, the civil-unioned woman points out that in the real world, her civil union isn’t at all recognized as the equivalent of marriage.  The two friends then discover they don’t have the same rights at all, symbolizing what hundreds of civil-unioned couples across New Jersey have experienced since the law took effect in February 2007.