TRENTON -- After a month in legislative limbo, a controversial bill to allow gay marriage in New Jersey will get a vote in the state Senate Thursday, Senate President Richard Codey said Tuesday.

The decision sets up another dramatic day here as supporters said they won’t know if the measure will pass until the votes are tallied. Senators will make a decision a month after Codey called off a vote when sponsors worried there wasn’t enough support — and a week after Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts said his house won’t vote on gay marriage until it passes the Senate.

Full Star-Ledger coverage of the Gay Marriage Debate in New Jersey

"Given the intensely personal nature of this issue, I think the people of this state deserve the right to a formal debate on the Senate floor," Codey said.

With many legislators refusing to say where they stand, Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), a sponsor, said the vote forces them to "stand up and be counted on how they feel about equal rights."

"They can’t be hesitant anymore," Weinberg said. "They have to come to the realization that we were elected to take sometimes difficult stands, but we were not elected to only worry about the next election."

Sen. Gerald Cardinale (R-Bergen), an opponent of the bill, said there isn’t enough support in either house to pass the measure but declined to say it would fail in the Senate.

"I have no way of getting into anybody’s head and saying how they’re going to go," Cardinale said. "Maybe they’re hoping that the debate will inflame people or that there will be folks who say outrageous things."

Senate Majority Leader and incoming Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) declined to say how he would vote, but said gay marriage supporters "have made a very strong case about civil rights — one that’s hard to ignore, to be perfectly honest with you."

Roberts said the gay marriage divide in the Assembly is "very, very, very close," and his colleagues had been reluctant to vote on the bill only to see it go down in the Senate.

"A lot of Assembly people have said, ‘We want to support it, but we frankly want to know that it’s going to pass both houses,’" said Roberts (D-Camden). "And I think that’s a similar view in the Senate, that this has to be a reality in both houses. It’s simple mathematics."

If the bill clears the Senate, Roberts said he will post it in the full Assembly "immediately" Monday without a committee hearing, a day before leadership changes in both houses. Gov. Jon Corzine has pledged to sign it and today said "marriage equality is an idea whose time has come." Gov.-elect Chris Christie, who opposes gay marriage, takes office Jan. 19.

Codey’s announcement means feverish lobbying by both sides will continue. John Tomicki of the Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage said local organizers affiliated with his group are contacting senators opposed to the bill, to make sure they do not change their minds. Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality said "over 1,000" members of his organization would rally at the Statehouse Thursday.

Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Union), a sponsor of the bill, said if it fails in the Senate, the "fight will continue ... in the courts and continue in the legislative bodies."

By Mary Fuchs and Claire Heininger/Statehouse Bureau

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