Amendment One

I've been away for awhile - still am - observing North Carolina from afar. Today I'm in Vancouver, the very best city on earth. From here, where I'm surrounded by people from all around the world, North Carolina looks like a petty little pool of bigotry and ignorance. Sure there are some bright spots, mostly university towns, but on the whole, the Old North State has become an embarrassment and a laughingstock.

Paul “Skip” Stam has idiosyncratic notions about case law. Encountering obstacles to the conservative agenda in established law, or a constitution, he has reached through them for obsolete iterations of dogma in archaic documents such as the Magna Carta, the Code of Justinian or more recently, as with the marriage amendment, the Acts of the Albemarle. Ignoring the lineage of precedent, he finds the future in history’s discards.

It is a curious affectation that Stam dotes on quirks in outdated pre-revolutionary law to justify assaults on post-revolutionary freedoms and liberties. His royalist tendencies bespeak an aristocratic and autocratic disdain for civil government rather than any zeal for individual freedoms. In supporting the drive to restrict the human right of individuals to form partnerships for life he has oft quoted the 1669 Acts of the Albemarle as the foundation of marriage in North Carolina. How quaint and reckless to claim a foundation on the shifting sands of history in the Albemarle Sound.

This is Raleigh

This is Greenville

This is Wilmington

This is Wilson

This is Rocky Mount

This is Durham

This is North Carolina

It's looking pretty ugly right now. For the life of me I don't understand what is going on. I read a poll the other day that said a majority was against banning civil unions, yet when they were told that Amendment One would in fact ban civil unions, that same majority still planned to vote for the damned thing. Hell, ten percent of those polled thought a For vote would legalize gay marriage.

Anyway I'm not giving up. My personal goal was to get 20 Against votes and at this point I am several short of that. I actually had a small house party Saturday night and tried to sway some votes. It did not turn out well. After pleading what I thought was a pretty convincing case I wound up calling several of my guests bigots. But only after they insisted they were voting Yes regardless.

That's Protect All NC Families' closing argument. Mine is even shorter. Please don't end my domestic partnership tomorrow.

Last month, I discussed the utter pointlessness of late-in-the-game Presidential Primaries, namely North Carolina’s primary on Tuesday, May 8th. But the big story on May 8th isn’t who political-minded North Carolinians are voting for. It’s what we are (or are not) voting for that has the lame-stream all a-buzz.

There has been a great deal of talk all across the USA regarding North Carolina’s Amendment One – aka “The Marriage Amendment” – vote. Amendment One is only a single sentence long, but it’s one of the most controversial sentences in recent memory (right up there with “I can’t believe it’s not butter!” and “Casey Anthony is innocent!”).

Read the whole article at Political Ruck.us.

This morning our Sunday Newspaper carried a full page advertisement...a full page black and white profile picture of a sincere, dignified-looking, white-maned Billy Graham accompanied by the following text:

At 93, I never thought we would have to debate the definition of marriage. The Bible is clear--God's definition of marriage is between a man and a woman. I want to urge my fellow North Carolinians to vote FOR the marriage Amendment on Tuesday, May 8.

God Bless you as you vote,
BillY Graham
Montreat, N.C.
(Paid For by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association)

My thoughts are as follows:

The Rev. Dwayne Walker, pastor of Charlotte’s Little Rock AME Zion Church, says he’s against same-sex marriage – and against Amendment One.

Rev. Walker has been an advocate for many good causes here in Charlotte for years and has always opened up his church for community events and I am glad that he has come out against Amendment One.

Read More: Charlotte Observer

The annual OutRaleigh street festival happened today for only its second time. Though it looked a lot like the annual pride events over in Durham, I felt that it took on special significance given the looming amendment vote on Tuesday. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.