New Jersey became the latest state to have its definition of marriage effectively rewritten by a judicial despot. Citing the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – the federal law that defined marriage as between one man and one woman and part of which was recently struck down by the Supreme Court – Mercer County Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson ruled, “Same-sex couples must be allowed to marry in order to obtain equal protection of the law under the New Jersey constitution.”

Her decision means the Garden State must perform and recognize same-sex marriages beginning Oct. 21. Keep in mind, Jersey already allows civil unions. But unions don’t go far enough for same-sex activists intent on ramming through their agenda. As Jazz Shaw of HotAir notes, “[W]hile it’s not illegal for a judge at that level to issue such a ruling, it was obvious from the moment it happened that this was going to get bounced up the chain.”

Indeed, the strategy here is based on the assumption that if DOMA can be struck down as a federal law, there’s nothing that can prevent a similar law at the state level from getting the boot. DOMA’s demise has generated a chain reaction throughout the country, giving more leverage to same-sex advocates.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie is prepared to appeal the ruling, but his decision to defend it based solely on the “the will of the voters on the issue of marriage equality,” as his spokesman Michael Drewniak put it, is disheartening. What ever happened to defending “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”?