(USA) - New Jersey's civil unions law has failed to provide all the benefits of marriage to at least one in five same-sex couples, a gay rights group told a panel Wednesday that will report its findings to the governor and state Legislature. More than 300 of the 1,514 same-sex couples who have joined in civil unions have complained to Garden State Equality, the state's leading gay rights group, about employers denying them benefits under the law, said David M. Smith, the group's deputy director. ``Calling our relationship and our legal status a civil union, I believe, gives my company an easy out,'' said one of the affected men. ``Calling it what it is - a marriage - makes denial of those benefits obvious for what it is: discrimination.''
