TRENTON — Vowing to make a bill legalizing same-sex marriage a priority, Senate President Stephen Sweeney said today he doesn't expect a battle in the new Legislature, but rather with Gov. Chris Christie, who has been a staunch opponent of it.

The announcement by the legislative leaders that they planned to make gay marriage a centerpiece of the new session that begins today puts Sweeney and his fellow Democrats on the offensive and forces Christie to take a stand on a delicate political issue.

"It's going be a fight," Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said. "We expect it to be a fight. The governor’s a decent person, and I think we can work on educating him to the fact of what it means."

Sweeney abstained when a same-sex marriage bill came before the Legislature two years ago, helping the measure go down to defeat in the final days in office for Gov. Jon Corzine, who had pledged to sign the measure if it passed.

Months ago, Sweeney, a Catholic, said he was wrong not to support the bill, which he said he erroneously considered a religious issue, not a matter of civil rights, as he now views it.

But Sweeney and Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver (D-Essex) said they now have the votes to get the measure passed in their respective chambers and will work to get the required two-thirds of the Senate vote to override an anticipated veto by Christie.

Christie’s office has declined to comment on the proposed legislation since it was disclosed Saturday night, but two years ago he vowed to veto the measure if it passed.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), who co-sponsored the measure in 2010 with state Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), said the latest effort already has bipartisan support.

Sweeney, who announced last week that he plans to form an exploratory committee to look at a possible run for U.S. Senate in 2014, said the bill would go to the appropriate committees "immediately" and that he wanted a vote in the Senate before the budget break in March.

Assemblyman Reed Gusciora (D-Mercer), the state’s only openly gay legislator — Assemblyman-elect Tim Eustace (D-Bergen), who is being sworn in Tuesday, is also gay — said Christie might not be an obstacle.

"He has already stated that gay couples should be afforded the same dignity and equal respect under the laws," Gusciora said at a press conference in Trenton attended by nearly a dozen Democratic leaders.

Christie has said he favors civil unions, the current law in New Jersey that was adopted in 2003.

But Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, a gay rights advocacy group, said civil unions are "failed experiments" because they don’t extend to same-sex couples the same rights held by heterosexual couples.

"Well, it took a couple of years but Steve Sweeney and I are finally playing on the same team," Goldstein said. "He’s evolved just like the world has evolved."

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John Tomicki, president of the New Jersey Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage, insisted that same-sex marriage is not a civil rights issue.

Tomicki said that two of the six states that recognize same-sex marriages — New Hampshire and Iowa — are trying to reverse the measures, and the law in New York recognizing gay marriage, which was approved last summer, is being challenged in two courts.

Patrick Murray, the director of polling at Monmouth University, said the timing of the announcement smacked of partisan politics. With a gubernatorial election next year, he said Democrats are looking to saddle Christie with some "political baggage" they can use against him in a possible re-election campaign.

"The political overtones are unmistakable in this," Murray said, "because they know it’s all but certain Gov. Christie will veto it."

Related coverage:

• Advocates of N.J. legalization of gay marriage hope for better outcome with new bill

• N.J. Legislature to introduce bill legalizing gay marriage

• N.J. judge OKs suit seeking gay marriages over civil unions

• Editorial: N.J. Gov Chris Christie should heed voters on gay marriage

