Municipal pool denies family membership to same-sex couple

The temperatures will be in the 80s for much of the next week, but don't expect to see Patti Jaworski at the pool, no matter how hot it gets.

It's not that she didn't try to get a pool membership before they expired. She tried. It's just that Jaworski and her same-sex partner were denied a family membership because they don't fit the township's definition of "family."

Township Attorney Joseph Triarsi, who wrote Jaworski and her partner a letter informing them of the township's decision, could not be reached for comment.

At the Township Council meeting when the question arose of whether to grant the requested family membership, his immediate advice was to reject it based on the legal definition of "family" of a married man and woman.

"They're not a recognized family unit," he said at the time.

Calls to the state Attorney General's Office on whether that distinction could be considered discriminatory were not returned.

The decision does not ban either Jaworski or her partner — an untenured elementary school teacher in another county, she asked not to be identified for fear of anti-gay discrimination — from joining the pool at the more expensive rate for singles.

They are not joining anyway.

"I want no part of it," Jaworski said Monday afternoon. "I'll just go to the beach. I'll just spend my money there."

The experience differs sharply from the experiences Jaworski claims to have had elsewhere in Clark.

It becomes all the more difficult to digest because she grew up in Clark and knows some of her elected officials from their days at Arthur L. Johnson Regional High School, including Mayor Sal Bonaccorso and 4th Ward Councilman Brian Toal.

"It was very disheartening to get this response," said Jaworski. "It was kind of like a slap in the face."

Discussion at the council meeting was virtually nonexistent, but Tuesday night Toal said he personally would have no problem with the family membership if the council's legal counsel had not recommended otherwise.

"The pool committee should have given us a directive, 'We have no problem with it,'" he said. "They threw it at the council, and our attorney said the state doesn't recognize it. That's where it stops."

Jaworski and her partner have no children. They been together for eight years, and held a private commitment ceremony four years ago.

"I really think the township is missing the boat," Jaworski, a Middlesex County high school health and physical education teacher, said Monday afternoon. "I'm really disappointed in their answer."

The two of them live on Lefferts Lane, in the house Jaworski grew up in.

Jaworski's quest for a family membership began toward the end of June when she visited the Clark pool office at the Charles H. Brewer Municipal Building.

There, she said, Assistant Pool Director Rose Tomchak told her to make the request in a letter to the Township Council, which denied it during its July 8 meeting.

"It's a sleepy little town and I think it just needs a few more years before it wakes up and realizes we're not the only couple in this situation," said Jaworski.

Despite her severe disappointment in the township's decision, Jaworski said she has no desire to make her case in court.

"As an educator, I always tell my students, 'Ask any questions, but when you ask any question, there's a 50-50 chance the answer will be no,'" she said. "What kind of educator would I be if I don't do what I'm telling my students?"

With the stipulation that the family couple be married, the policy at the pool also would preclude unmarried couples with children from family membership. No information was available at presstime to say whether this actually was the case.

 At the moment, no states in the union confer same-sex unions the same status as marriages, although Vermont recently recognized them as civil unions, a classification one step short of marriage.

"It's the 21st century," said Toal simply. "It's something that should be looked in with a legal standpoint in the near future."