A recent New Jersey ruling catapulted gay marriage back into the spotlight and forced the state legislature to determine what marriage really means.

This decision is crucial to the future of the United States’ policies on marriage, because it’s the first time that language is becoming the principle factor in decision making. Other rulings fueling the gay rights movement through the country have granted civil unions or marriage to couples for several years, but New Jersey is the first to send the decision to a legislature to design a uniform term that will apply to both gays and straights and hopefully end some dispute.

The most notorious case regarding gay marriage took place in Massachusetts in 2004 and triggered a civil rights wave that swept the nation, forcing us to recognize the exclusivity problems surrounding the word “marriage.”

The Massachusetts Supreme Court determined it unconstitutional to deny gay couples the same rights and benefits as straight ones in a groundbreaking but shaky decision that maintained the term “marriage” for all couples, with no regard for the sentimental attachment to the term held by many Christians.

Since the ruling, the fuming debate over whether or not gays deserve marriage benefits has fizzled out. The primary dispute concerns the nostalgic principles associated with the term. So it’s not surprising the Garden State’s high court ruled unanimously that denying marriage benefits to gay couples is a violation of civil rights, but to award the state legislature 180 days to decide on a uniform term for the unions is a bold and questionable decision.

The state court was split in the decision to grant the legislature the power in deciding which word to use for all future unions, but it’s questionable whether the court should have retained the right. Putting such a sensitive decision into the hands of the legislature, whose members are allowed use of bias in their policy making, could easily give way to third party influence by lobbyists or voting based on partisanship. But if the legislature complies with the court ruling and effectively decides on a packaging for the resolution, it could manifest itself in a powerful progressive movement and bring Americans closer to resolving the issue nationwide.

Many Americans agree gays shouldn’t be subject to inequality, but still deny them the term marriage and refuse to subscribe to the idea of exchanging their marriage licenses for civil unions. These mixed feelings can agitate when “liberal courts” decide for the populous which term they’re allowed to use. People begin to feel silenced in a country where everyone supposedly has a voice. So by awarding the decision to the legislature, the courts seem to grant the people their voice on the issue and involve them in the policy making.

This can be far more digestible for those with differing political perspectives and possibly become a binding agent for American people. Now that many Americans have finally accepted that this isn’t a conflict over morals, but a misunderstanding over language, a huge step is being made in the direction of equality.