The slow death of New Jersey’s marriage equality legislation grinds on – the lower house of the New Jersey legislature may decline to hear the same bill that recently failed to secure a vote in the state senate.

“But I must emphasize that no hearing has been scheduled and that I am continuing to discuss this issue with our caucus to gauge whether there is enough support for it,” [Assembly Speaker Joseph] Roberts said.

The bill has struggled to gain enough votes for passage in the state’s Senate, and backers are hoping to recover momentum by moving the push to the state’s Assembly. Legislators are said to have retreated from the bill under fire from the state’s Catholic bishops and the incumbent Democratic governor’s loss to an anti-gay marriage Republican last month.

Elsewhere…

D.C. – An openly queer nominee to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission gets the approval of the Senate Health, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Chai Feldblum’s nomination would give the EEOC a powerful voice on LGBT employment rights as the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is posed to pass, but she has been blasted by conservatives for her views. (The Advocate, The Bilerico Project)

D.C. – Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grasley is “too busy” to weigh in on the Ugandan “kill gays” bill, despite his role as a prominent member of “The Family,” a secretive evangelical Christian organization with strong ties to the bill’s backers in the Ugandan Parliament. The bill has split evangelicals, with many – most recently, Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church – opposing the bill’s many provisions. Despite his condemnation, Rachel Maddow shows how Warren previously supported and may even have had a role in helping create the measure. The bill’s sponsor has promised to rewrite the measure to eliminate the portions requiring the death penalty and life imprisonment for various homosexual offenses, in favor of an “ex-gay” approach. (ThinkProgress, Towleroad)

Texas – A teenager was kidnapped, repeatedly sexually assaulted, and his car set on fire by two men in a small Texas town. There are reports that the young man may also have been sodomized with a tire iron before escaping across 3 miles of desert before he was found by a sheriff’s deputy. Two suspects are in custody in what is being called a hate crime, but the Dallas Voice reports sheriffs are not returning reporters’ calls — are they trying to cover this up? (Dallas Voice, Towleroad)