Democracy is a wonderful thing, except when it’s not, but it’s often difficult to know when it is and when it isn’t. It all depends on, well, politics — or the whims of the governor, which in New Jersey is often pretty much the same thing.

So, according to Gov. Chris Christie, it’s a good thing to have a vote on a civil right — same-sex marriage — but not a good thing to have a vote on local charter schools.

Odd, because there is a historic tradition of voting on local school issues — New Jersey loved it so much we used to do it two or three times a year — while referendums on broad social issues are rare.

The contradiction — hypocrisy? — was set up nicely the other day when Assembly committees acted on the two issues. The Assembly Judiciary Committee, on a

party-line vote, released a gay marriage bill; the Assembly Education Committee, also on a party-line vote, approved a bill allowing local voters to decide whether they want to pay for charter schools in their communities.

In the Judiciary Committee, the Republicans were for referendum and the Democrats were not. In the Education Committee, the opposite was true.

While the panels were meeting, Christie was at a town hall meeting and he repeated his insistence that same-sex marriage go to a referendum. "The fact is, they don’t trust the people of New Jersey to decide," he said.

He made the comment at a charter school — and the governor has repeatedly said he would veto any bill allowing referendums on charter schools.

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As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

There is a surprising consistency in this dual duel over whether New Jersey residents should have to the right to decide these issues and that is the sense that voters would disapprove both.

Some backers of gay marriage believe a referendum would result in its defeat. It’s happened 31 times in the United States, so it’s not an unreasonable fear.

Nothing like an issue that implicates both religion and sexual behavior to ignite the conservative opposition. Just ask John Kerry. He might have been elected president in 2004 if Ohio also had not put a same-sex marriage referendum on the ballot the same election day.

And fear of defeat is precisely the rationale of opponents of votes on charter schools.

"If it goes on the ballot, no new charter school will ever be approved," says Carlos Perez, chief executive officer of the New Jersey Charter Schools Association. He told the Assembly Education Committee whenever local communities in other states have voted on charter schools, they have defeated them.

It’s the "interest groups," he says. Teacher unions. School board groups. They will come out to defeat charter schools.

"Charter schools are new to a community," he says. "They won’t have the resources to mount a campaign and they’ll be up against very well-organized groups."

Just to add one more turn of the screw, consider this: There is talk of compromise once the school charter vote bill gets to the Senate.

That’s where it died last year, laid to rest by state Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex), the Education Committee leader with close ties to Steve Adubato Sr.

He’s the Democratic political boss who — like Camden boss and fellow charter school supporter George Norcross — often supports Christie. Adubato also just happens to run a charter school in Newark.

The compromise is this: Votes on charter schools would be allowed in suburbs, otherwise known as "high-performing" districts, but not in cities.

So, democracy might be a good thing in education, too, but only in suburbia.

"No," insists the Rev. Toby Sanders, the president of the Trenton school board. He also testified before the Assembly Education Committee. "That would reinstate the era before Brown vs. Board of Education." It would be, he said,

a return to "separate but equal."

"It would treat communities where the residents are brown and black differently from communities where most residents are white," Sanders said. "It would set back civil rights."