gay marriage

Although the deadline has passed for bills to be drafted in the NC Assembly, a great deal of damage to our state has already been dealt. And if these regressive politicians are kept in power, we are only going to suffer more.

One of the biggest losses in 2012 was Amendment One, which declared that marriage was to be between only a man and a woman - unnecessary as NC already lacked gay marriage legislation. And now marriage equality will be much harder to attain.

Not.

From Think Progress via NC Policy Watch.

• Repealing DADT has had no overall negative impact on military readiness, including cohesion, recruitment, retention, assaults, harassment, or morale.

Gallup says yes. CBS says maybe not.

"As is often true in polling, it depends on how you ask the question."

"A Gallup poll last week showed that 51 percent of Americans support gay marriage, but a CBS News/New York Times poll out today shows that only 38 percent support it."
from article on Washington Post site:

When given that third choice, polls show that it draws significantly from both the pro-gay marriage and anti-gay marriage camps, but in the end, overall support for gay marriage drops well below a majority.

"Just give everybody a chance to have the life they want."
Clint Eastwood
Do you believe that...well do you punk?

This eloquent piece by Jacob Tobia gets to the heart of the pain and sense of disenfranchisement that pro-equality residents in North Carolina have felt over the last couple of weeks. I first met Jacob when he was one of the cast of Duke's production of The Laramie Project several months ago, and met up again at the Point Foundation conference honoring its scholars, past and present. On September 12 we, along with hundreds of other members of the community, attended the Duke and Durham: Love=Love Candlelight Vigil , just before the NC Senate voted to place the discrimination amendment on the May 2012 ballot. When he emailed me about his piece I knew that I would want to share it with you...

An Open Letter to the NC General Assembly

By Jacob Tobia

Dear NCGA,

Hey, it’s me. I don’t know if you remember me or not, but we used to be pretty good friends. Do you remember that awkward high schooler who stood at the dais of the Senate back in 2007 when he was a Senate page? You remember, the one who had just gotten a haircut because his father said that he should look presentable at the legislature. The one who had long, brown, curly hair before then. You don’t remember me? But I stood right at the front of the Senate sessions, just to the right of the now-governor Beverly Perdue.

Hat tip to NC Policy Watch for keeping up with the crazies.

It is really about one thing: preserving the historic understanding of sexuality, gender, and the family in North Carolina, and protecting the right of parents and the Church to transmit traditional values about these core issues to the next generation.

Unless I've misread the US Constitution, the state has no business protecting the right of the church to do anything, as if there is one "church" to be protected. That's god's job, and if he or she can't get 'er done without legislative treason, we'll have to take "omnipotent" out of the job description.

It's time to boycott North Carolina

"Different things can be treated differently if the things or people are in a very different relationship."

--North Carolina House Majority Leader Paul "Skip" Stam (R), referring to gay and lesbian same-sex couples and their eligiblity for civil equality, at a debate at UNC-CH Law School, 9/21/2011

Well, Skip this "thing" (a native North Carolinian, who pays her taxes and is in a legal marriage not recognized by my state already) is calling for a boycott of this great state. We have a state economy in the crapper (10.4% unemployment), a state budget in crisis, and quite a few pro-LGBT companies and institutions located here that don't deserve to be punished by a boycott.

Two events of significance are coming up this week in North Carolina's fight to beat back the discriminatory, job-killing marriage amendment measure that is going to go on the ballot next May.

When Republican Dale Folwell, Speaker Pro-Tem in a press conference on August 30th described the introduction of a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage he made a curious statement about the lineage of traditional marriage in North Carolina:

We all know about the time tested definition of marriage in North Carolina going back to 1655.

He was no doubt referring to the year that Nathaniel Batts, a fur trader and land speculator, became North Carolina’s first permanent European settler. Batts came from Virginia to establish residence in 1655 in a 20 foot square brick house with 2 rooms and a chimney on the Bertie peninsula between the Roanoke and Chowan rivers, noted in maps of the time as "Batts House".