Next month, North Carolina is going to have the opportunity to disenfranchise several groups of people, roll back the progress clock, and generally make us look like a bunch of slack-jawed bigots to the rest of the nation. I’m talking, of course, about the Amendment 1 vote, which could add this little ditty to our state constitution:
Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.
Kinda harkens back to this,
One of the libraries at UNC posted on Facebook this snapshot of one of our state’s previous forays into institutionalized prejudice. Ninety-five percent of the commenters were properly outraged and drew the comparison between it and what could happen in May. But, of course, there was one guy who instructed all comers to read Ezra Chapter 9 of the Bible. So I did. In it, Ezra prays about how Israelites who have married foreign women have caused the shitstorm they’re in. Apparently, mixing blood with other groups and not keeping one’s people separate offends the Lord.
And I can say, with all the love in my heart and the conviction that you’re allowed to hold any religious belief you choose, that I DON’T GIVE A SHIT. Even if you extrapolate and take this as a commandment that whites not marry “octaroons”, YOU DON’T GET TO SAY. You don’t get to say whether they get to marry because the constitution of our state, last time I checked, was not the Bible.
Which brings me back to the vote at hand.
If a person votes yes on Amendment 1, it is because of a religious belief that gays should not marry (and, let’s be honest, that gays should not be gay). That’s the only reason anyone has ever given to me for voting yes.
So I say again, YOU DON’T GET TO SAY. Your interpretation of a Bible verse cannot take away someone’s God-given, and yes I just went there, rights.
Stop trying to shove your Bible in my Constitution.
I CAN’T BELIEVE WE’RE EVEN VOTING ON THIS.
Now everybody go sit around a fire, hold hands, and sing this über-folksy jingle-jangle:
(My only problem with the video, other than the whiff of mawkishness, is the lady at 1:30 who talks about how “many people involved in the arts and a lot of other creative, um, activities […] would be devastated by the passage of Amendment 1”. Just checked the calendar, and yep, it’s 2012. Are we really still under the impression that there are no gay farmers, insurance salespeople, CrossFit coaches, or gas station attendants? Really? They’re still all actors?)
(Why is Ezra’s horse such a fucking racist homophobe?!)
Maybe someday this country (and this state) will simply come to believe in “people”. Not much hope that I can see.
thanks for writing this, ame.
i noticed a big ol’ dollop of bird shit on our “Against the Amendment” yard sign this morning . . . damn birds.
Those birds are homophobes!
There are gay CrossFit coaches? I mean, other than me?
You are an incredible person, a gifted writer, and a very dear friend. I still have a heart on for you!
Of course up here in “liberal land” we seem to surviving despite our wicked support of gay marriage…but the forces of evil keep trying to put roadblocks in the way of a woman’s right to make a difficult choice, privately, and according to her personal circumstances….and now there’s a new witch hunt afoot–given that we were the original epicenter of the pedophilic priest scandal, we now have a “pedophile around every corner” zeitgeist. Sigh.