Two Teaneck men prepared Sunday night to become New Jersey’s first gay couple to be legally joined in a civil union – at the first possible instant.

Steven Goldstein, 44, and partner Daniel Gross, 36, planned a late-night ceremony that would unite them at 12:01 a.m. today, when New Jersey’s civil union law takes effect.

Civil unions give gay and lesbian couples the rights and benefits of marriage under a different name, leading many gay activists to decry it as a separate-but-equal form of partnership.

Still, Goldstein said, becoming civilly united is so important that he and his partner didn’t want to wait any longer than necessary.

“After 15 years together, we didn’t want another minute without all the protections we can get,” said Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality and a leader in New Jersey’s gay marriage push.

“Civil unions are not marriage,” he told the New York Daily News Sunday evening. “We want to get married, and we’re going to keep fighting for marriage equality.”

Vermont and Connecticut are the other two states that allow gay couples to be joined in civil unions. Massachusetts is the only state that recognizes gay marriage.

Several town clerks planned to open their offices at midnight to distribute civil union applications. Couples must then wait 72 hours before they can be civilly united, just like heterosexual couples in New Jersey.

Goldstein and Gross took advantage of a quirk in the law: Because they were previously civilly united in Vermont, they could have a ceremony immediately in New Jersey.

Their ceremony was planned for the Teaneck office of state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat who sponsored the civil union bill. She said Goldstein and Gross planned a traditional Jewish ceremony – up to a point.

“They’re not doing the traditional glass breaking, because they’re waiting until a civil union is called marriage,” Weinberg said.