TRENTON, N.J. — The state Senate on Thursday rejected a proposal that would have made New Jersey the sixth state in the nation to allow marriages involving same-sex couples. The vote was the latest in a succession of setbacks for advocates of gay marriage across the country.

After months of intense lobbying and hours of emotional debate, lawmakers voted 20-14 against the bill, bringing tears from some advocates who packed the Senate chambers and rousing applause from opponents of the measure, who also came out in force. The vote ends the effort to win legislative approval of the measure, and sets the stage for a new battle before the New Jersey Supreme Court.

"We applaud the senators for upholding a time-tested institution: marriage," said Len Deo, president of the New Jersey Family Policy Council, which has argued that gay marriage would weaken the social fabric by redefining one of society's bedrock institutions.

Supporters of gay marriage had hoped to win approval for the measure before Jan. 19, when Gov. Jon Corzine, who promised to sign it, will be replaced by Gov.-elect Christopher Christie, who opposes it.

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With the effort to win legislative approval now dead, supporters of same-sex marriage vowed to focus their efforts on the state's highest court, which in 2006 ordered lawmakers to give same-sex couples the same rights as others whether or not they called such unions marriages. The Legislature responded by enacting a civil unions law, but gay-rights leaders say that the measure still leaves them subject to discrimination when applying for health insurance or trying to visit partners in hospitals, and that they will ask the court to grant them equal treatment.

Leaders of Lambda Legal Defense Fund, which has helped coordinate gay rights causes in New Jersey and elsewhere, said they said they were confident that the court would prove more receptive than the Legislature.

Opponents of gay marriage said that they, too, were prepared for a legal fight. Jon Tomicki, a leader of the New Jersey Coalition to Preserve and Protect Marriage, said that legislators had already complied with the court order by enacting civil unions, and urged lawmakers to let the public cast its verdict on gay marriage in a referendum.

"In 30 other states, voters have gotten the chance to decide," Tomicki said. "There's no reason why New Jerseyans shouldn't have the same right." In nearly every instance in which gay marriage has been put up for a referendum, it has been defeated.

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