<div id="subtitle">Garden State Equality, New Jersey's largest gay rights advocate, announced Monday it would end donating to political parties</div><div><p> <p><a>Garden State Equality</a>, New Jersey's largest gay rights advocate, announced Monday it would end donating to political parties. The new policy comes just weeks after the New Jersey Legislature overwhelmingly spurned a gay marriage bill.</p> <p>The group is one of the nation's largest to lobby lawmakers for gay rights and lists more than 65,000 active members.</p> <p>While lawmaker's failure to approve gay nuptials was not listed as a reason for the new policy, the group did mention the loss in its statement.</p> <p>“The only LGBT civil rights law New Jersey does not have is marriage equality,” the group said after listing several gay rights milestones. “After the state voted down a marriage bill earlier this year, Lambda Legal announced at a Garden State Equality news conference that our side is going back to court.”</p> <p>The new policy says the group will donate to the campaigns of individual pro-gay rights candidates, instead of political parties. The group has also asked members to do the same.</p> <p>“No political party has a record good enough on LGBT civil rights that it can rightfully claim to be entitled to our money on a party-wide basis,” Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality, said in a statement. “No longer will we let any political party take our money and volunteers with one hand, and slap us in the face with the other when we seek full equality.”</p> <p>The push to legalize gay marriage in the Garden State ran aground soon after Republican Chris Christie, a gay marriage opponent, defeated Democratic Jon Corzine, who had promised support for the gay marriage bill if reelected, for the governor's mansion in November. </p> </p><img src="http://admatch-syndication.mochila.com/images/ad.gif?aid=68724903&bid=informcom" /></div><div id="copyright"><div>

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