Trouble in the Tar Heel State

[William769]

Last week, the North Carolina legislature sent a draconian anti-marriage, anti-family constitutional amendment to the May ballot. That this happened is a travesty of justice in several ways.

First, the public is in a period of great flux on the freedom to marry, in every part of the country — and people across the board are moving our way. North Carolinians are watching shows like Brothers and Sisters, learning the stories of people like openly lesbian country star Chely Wright, and, most importantly, sharing stories of the same-sex couples and families in their own lives. To try to preempt and circumvent these conversations by cementing discrimination into the constitution is pretty desperate, and it’s terribly wrong.

Second, to add insult to injury, in an unholy alliance between antigay Republicans and some spineless Democrats, the legislature reached a “compromise” to advance this cruel constitutional amendment to the ballot, not in November 2012, where turnout would be large, but in May, to coincide with the Republican presidential primary. This is apparently the case because anti-equality Democrats wanted to vote for the bill as long as they were sure it wouldn’t be on the November 2012 ballot, when they thought it could hurt their own chances by driving social conservatives to the polls. And while we are in fact making great headway with Republicans, let’s just say that Republican primary voters in North Carolina are not our best demographic.

Another reason for choosing this election: Recent polling shows that a solid majority (55 percent) of North Carolinians would vote against this amendment. So our opponents’ solution: find the segment of the North Carolina populace that is most likely to vote their way and put it on the ballot when they’re most likely to show up, depriving the majority of their real chance to make a decision (despite the hypocritical call to “let the people vote”).

http://www.advocate.com/Politics/Commentary/Trouble_in_the_Tar_Heel_State/