North Carolina today swiftly moved one step closer to enshrining un-constitutional discrimination into its founding document. A North Carolina House committee quickly voted in favor of a bill that would pave the way for a ballot measure to be put before its citizens allowing them to vote to ban same-sex marriage and to write that discrimination directly into their state constitution. The full House, after just three house of debate, voted in favor of the measure, 75-42. Rep, Paul Stam (image) has been the most-outspoken in favor of the discrimination, likening same-sex marriage to incest and polygamy.
The North Carolina Senate now must take up the bill, and is expected to soon. The bill is expected to easily pass.
Assuming passage, voters in a May primary will decided whether or not to add this discriminatory language into the constitution:
“Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.”
The Raleigh News And Observer writes that the verbiage could mean a loss of benefits for some state and local employees, and adds,
Republicans initially wanted the amendment to make the November 2012 ballot. But House Speaker Thom Tillis said the May referendum date will “remove the politics from” the vote.
“There has been a lot of accusations that this was purely politically motivate to change the dynamic in November. That takes that argument off the table,” he said.
The speaker also acknowledged that date was designed, in part, to help it garner enough votes to pass.
The AP reports:
North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast without a gay marriage ban in its constitution. The idea has gone nowhere in the last decade because Democratic leaders quashed Republican efforts to debate amendment referenda.
Now with Republicans in charge of the Legislature for the first time in 140 years, conservatives are making their move. Lawmakers return Monday to Raleigh to debate proposed amendments, including one to let voters next year decide if a state law already on the books defining marriage as between one man and one woman should be imprinted into the state constitution as well.
“It’s time that we settled this issue,” said GOP state Rep. Dale Folwell of Winston-Salem, the No. 2 leader in the House and a key amendment proponent.
Gay rights supporters and gay-friendly companies in the state have been attacking the proposal, saying a 2012 statewide ballot is unnecessary and would humiliate the state in a nation that’s become more accepting of same-sex relationships. They say it would discourage business from coming to North Carolina, where unemployment has crept back above 10 percent.
Michael Carmichael in The Huffington Post offers this scathing backstory:
In a replay of the Republican stealth attack on the labor movement in Wisconsin, the GOP has launched a sneak attack on the LGBT community of gays, lesbians, transgendered and bisexual citizens in North Carolina — the nation’s most embattled battleground state.
Under the guise of a debate on term limits, the Republicans will strip out the language of the bill and substitute a ban on gay marriage;
The same covert plan is operative in the NC House of Representatives and will run concurrently.
The Republicans’ covert plan was leaked to WRAL by an anonymous whistleblower, who explained the extremist rationale behind the covert legislative strategy:“We need to reach out to them and get them (gays) to change their lifestyle back to the one we accept.”
…
Rumors now coursing through Raleigh’s political establishment suggest that the Republican National Committee ordered the clumsy sneak attack. Some are zeroing in on the Chairman of the RNC, Reince Preibus, who hails from Wisconsin, a state now riven by extremist carnage and Ground Zero in the stealthy Republican assault on organized labor. Because of Republican moves to advance their anti-gay marriage amendment, North Carolina is now Ground Zero in their national campaign against gays.
One senior political observer based in Raleigh said, “This sneaky ploy has Reince Preibus’s fingerprints all over it.”
While attending a meeting of the Democratic National Committee in Chicago, the Chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party, David Parker was swift to respond. Parker issued a hard-hitting statement comparing this political ploy to recent Republican attempts to resegregate schools in North Carolina and to limit voting rights by requiring Photo IDs at polling places.
Regardless of how you feel about the North Carolina law that already makes gay marriage illegal, it is simply un-American to single out any group of law-abiding citizens to harass and torment. Every time we select a set of folks to exclude from America’s dream of a better life, we lose. The Founding Fathers did not let women vote. They counted African Americans as three fifths of a person. They required voters to own land. Most were fine with education being private. But times have changed. Strong women of both political parties serve us all in the US Senate, the Governor’s office, the General Assembly and in countless local offices. But the Republicans in the General Assembly want to reduce the impact of strong women. The Republicans in the General Assembly and Pat McCrory want to confuse folks with legalese on this issue. And for what reason? North Carolinians know the ban on gay marriage will not create any jobs or make their lives any better. We are tired of distractions. The Republicans in the legislature and Pat McCrory have done nothing to help the middle class in North Carolina. They’re just trying to tap dance their way through the year, distract us with their footwork, and avoid fixing our economy. Enough is enough. Grow up, Pat, and take some responsibility. If you really want to be Governor, you’re going to have focus on things other than who can vote and who can get married.
Stay tuned for more.