Much has been written and said about North Carolina passing another ban on marriage equality — it was already illegal there, now it’s extra super duper illegal — on Tuesday by a wide margin. But a couple of things really stick out in this article about the passage. First:
Tami Fitzgerald, who heads the pro-amendment group Vote FOR Marriage NC, said she believes the initiative awoke a silent majority of more active voters in the future.
“I think it sends a message to the rest of the country that marriage is between one man and one woman,” Fitzgerald said at a celebration Tuesday night. “The whole point is simply that you don’t rewrite the nature of God’s design based on the demands of a group of adults.”
Gosh, that “reasoning” sounds familiar. Where have I read something similar? Oh yeah, from the district court ruling in Loving v Virginia:
“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay, and red, and placed them on separate continents, and but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend the races to mix.”
And this:
Joe Easterling, who described himself as a devout Christian, voted for the amendment at a polling place in Wake Forest.
“I know that some people may argue that the Bible may not necessarily be applicable, or it should not be applicable, on such policy matters. But even looking at nature itself, procreation is impossible without a man and a woman. And because of those things, I think it is important that the state of North Carolina’s laws are compatible with the laws of nature but, more importantly, with the laws of God.”
So next you’ll be passing an amendment to stone women who aren’t virgins on their wedding day and allowing rapists to pay their victim’s father so he can keep her, right? Right?
State House Speaker Thom Tillis, a Republican from a Charlotte suburb, said earlier in the year that even if the amendment passed, it would be reversed as today’s young adults age — within 20 years. “It’s a generational issue,” Tillis told a student group at North Carolina State University in March about the amendment he supports.
He’s right, it probably will. Which means you’re on the wrong side of history, as bigots always have been in this country.
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justsomeguy
May 11, 2012 at 1:03 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
One thing I’m never clear on is why humans are responsible for enforcing god’s laws. God unilaterally dictates these things with exactly 0 input from anybody else (or so the story goes), yet he doesn’t lift a single finger to make sure we comply.
How about a split: humans are in charge of writing and enforcing human laws, and god is in charge of writing and enforcing god laws. Let’s give the Heaven PD something to do, already.
tommykey
May 11, 2012 at 1:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
That Loving excerpt always cracks me up.
If God intended for the races to be separate, then why did God allow humans the capacity to develop the means to travel to different parts of the world and overcome the distance that separated the races?
And as for Easterling:
But even looking at nature itself, procreation is impossible without a man and a woman.
Does he object to senior citizens getting married? It’s not like there’s going to be lots of procreatin’ going on there.
Bronze Dog
May 11, 2012 at 1:15 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
The procreation argument sometimes makes me wonder if they might someday start hunting down the asexually oriented like me and forcing us at gunpoint to get a (boy/girl)friend.
yellowsubmarine
May 11, 2012 at 1:17 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
I hope that the consequences that the young people in NC witness as the outcome of this rediculous piece of legislation cause a nice backlash against human suffering when they come of age. It’s cute that someone thinks that this will “[send] a message to the rest of the country that marriage is between one man and one woman.” As if we take our cues from North Carolina. Jeebus. On a side note, I wish the women in the movements behind crap like this would do what the bible says and keep silent so they can stop making the rest of us women look stupid.
yellowsubmarine
May 11, 2012 at 1:19 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Bronze Dog:
I wouldn’t worry about it since the bible doesn’t bother to qualify homosexuality as a sin because it doesn’t result in procreation.
slc1
May 11, 2012 at 1:23 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, so far Mary Cheney has procreated two children.
savagemutt
May 11, 2012 at 1:32 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Even the State House Speaker, who supported the amendment, admitted that the law would probably be gone in a few years.
What really struck me after the vote was hearing all the pro-amendment people on Facebook characterize the whole thing as “just a difference in opinion.” This in response to what they kept claiming were “venomous” attacks from anti-amendment folks. Hey, if you don’t want to be called a bigot, don’t act like one.
And I’ll also admit to a little bit of a pleasant surprise from a few conservative friends who derided the amendment, saying what consenting adults did was none of their business.
laurentweppe
May 11, 2012 at 1:33 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But wait: look: Abraham and Sarah, therefore, Gay bad baddy baddilly bad grrrrrrrrrrr
D. C. Sessions
May 11, 2012 at 1:34 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Somebody really should start introducing the rest of Leviticus in these States, a commandment at a time.
Marcus Ranum
May 11, 2012 at 1:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If anyone actually believed that there was a god who actually hated gays, they wouldn’t behave the way they do – they’d be content to sit back and let the supreme being do its own enforcing, and they’d damn well not want to get married. The fact that we’re having this “discussion” at all is clear evidence that NEITHER “side” believes even the smallest amount of the whole ‘god’ story.
Phillip IV
May 11, 2012 at 1:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
“Some” “may” argue that the Bible “may” “not necessarily” be applicable. That’s an instructive example of the level of self-deception we’re dealing with here. These people live in a bubble that’s about as easily penetrable as the battleship Yamato.
robb
May 11, 2012 at 1:50 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
procreation is impossible without male and female?
tell that to the New Mexico whiptail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexico_whiptail
d cwilson
May 11, 2012 at 2:02 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Every time I see this quote, I’m amazed that it was uttered, without a trace of irony, but a man who was descended from people who crossed an ocean to migrate from one continent to another, wiped out the people who were already living on this continent, and then forceably brought people over from yet another continent.
And that’s not even getting into the common practice of the plantation owner taking one of his slaves for a little action on the side. If “Almighty God” was so displeased with allowing the races to mix, he certainly didn’t show it to the slave owners.
The Lorax
May 11, 2012 at 2:20 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
But no one here is trying to force religious values onto a nation founded in secularism. Oh, sure, they only voted for it because of their belief in God, but not because they had religious motivations.
*slams face into desk*
… Is NASA hiring? Please send me to Mars…
Marcus Ranum
May 11, 2012 at 2:26 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
If “Almighty God” was so displeased with allowing the races to mix, he certainly didn’t show it to the slave owners.
Obviously, they didn’t believe in an almighty god any more than your typical atheist does. From the descriptions of the almighty god that I’ve read, anyone with half a brain would spend their whole life hiding under the couch, never eating anything but the approved foods, doing sacrifices and – seriously – would you even RISK having sex if you believed that some being that creates universes for fun cared about what you did with your genitals? The only sensible thing would be to fly under the radar screen for the shortest possible lifetime, get killed in an approved holy war or martyrdom, and go to heaven. The fact that people don’t spend their whole lives quaking in fear is proof that, at a basic level, they all know it’s bullshit.
Kaoru Negisa
May 11, 2012 at 2:31 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
When I read Tillis’s statement, I can’t help but ask, “Then why bother passing it at all?” If it’s going to go away anyway, why put it there in the first place? I think Andrew Sullivan was spot on when he described it as “the politics of spite.” Nothing long term has been accomplished according to Tillis, but he’s bound and determined to make people’s lives miserable for a few years longer if he possibly can.
One thing about Amendment One and the Obama announcement is that there has been an explosion in discussion about this topic. Just last night I managed to explain to a conservative friend why people get more passionate about issues like gay marriage than they do about issues like national debt. He was already in favor of gay marriage in a “it’s none of my business” sort of way, but the conversation managed to convince him that it’s pointless to discuss economic issues when social problems keep people from participating in the market on equal footing to begin with. It was a good conversation.
Plus, it was heartening to only see one person yelling to the rafters how “It’s not hate to love God’s WILL and LAW more than man’s will and law.” I resisted the urge to pointlessly argue that if that’s the case, then the two things are indistinguishable.
Chiroptera
May 11, 2012 at 2:42 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
savagemutt, #7: What really struck me after the vote was hearing all the pro-amendment people on Facebook characterize the whole thing as “just a difference in opinion.”
When you’re trying to enact your “opinion” into law, it ceases to be a mere “difference in opinion.”
Modusoperandi
May 11, 2012 at 3:24 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
tommykey “If God intended for the races to be separate, then why did God allow humans the capacity to develop the means to travel to different parts of the world and overcome the distance that separated the races?”
It’s weirder than that. Via Babel, He forced Man to split up but failed to enforce the borders.
robb “procreation is impossible without male and female? tell that to the New Mexico whiptail…”
God hates checkered whiptail lizards.
d cwilson “If ‘Almighty God’ was so displeased with allowing the races to mix, he certainly didn’t show it to the slave owners.”
Now you’re just being ridiculous. Supply-Side Jesus is pro-Capital.
robertfaber
May 11, 2012 at 3:49 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Well, if you’re on the side of marriage equality, there is one thing to take away from North Carolina. The measure in NC to ban same sex marriage and civil unions won by 22 points (61-39), in an election in with modest turnout. Michigan’s constitutional ban was passed 8 years ago by a similar margin (58-42). So if North Carolina is now about where Michigan was 8 years ago, it’s only a matter of time before all the bans are overturned.
Pierce R. Butler
May 11, 2012 at 6:53 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Human Rights Campaign and other major gay lobbying groups to call for a boycott of travel to and (f’rinstance) conventions in North Carolina in, uh, three centuries, two centuries, …
Moggie
May 11, 2012 at 7:51 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Oh yes, that oh so silent majority. Because anti-gay opinions just haven’t been getting expressed up to now, have they?
Michael Heath
May 11, 2012 at 9:45 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Maggie responds:
I think Ms. Fitzgerald has a point where if she’s right, it points to optimism. There is no good argument to deny gays their rights. We saw this in the Prop. 8 case and we encounter it with every single politician who is not fully on-board for gay marriage rights, including the president’s current position. That’s an advantage. The second advantage is that because there’s no good argument to deny gays their rights, it’s becoming increasingly politically incorrect to make such arguments beyond the conservative bubble. Republicans are increasingly fidgety about the whole topic; we can predict every subsequent election cycle will see more avoidance by those Republicans either in power or with a great chance to obtain power – with the Obama campaign working to get Romney to break this trend.
However, most bigots can not be moved. So their resentment builds as the popularity of their opinion erodes and they realize how impotent they are to both counter this trend or make a compelling case they’re correct beyond those who share their faith and their bigotry. So they cling to the word marriage as some sort of incoherent magic spell that justifies their cause, absolves them of their determined ignorance regarding homosexuality, and salves the stress from believing in a holy book which demands they hate and persecute yet simultaneously claims they should treat others with justice, love, and grace. The stress builds; their vote – a pleasant hidden orgasm.
Modusoperandi
May 12, 2012 at 2:18 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Michael Heath “…beyond the conservative bubble”
That was the one with Tina Turner and Master Blaster, wasn’t it?
“The stress builds; their vote – a pleasant hidden orgasm.”
With all the resentment, even their “O faces” are frowns. True story.
democommie
May 12, 2012 at 8:23 am (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Modus:
““The stress builds; their vote – a pleasant hidden orgasm.”
With all the resentment, even their “O faces” are frowns. True story.”
I am, quite simply shocked beyond words that make sense! You missed the obvious lowest of low hanging fruits (no pun intended, nosirree, I’m way to classy to say something like “low hanging fruits” intending it to mean, “gross, hairy, sweaty scrotum and balls.” Not ME, I’m above that sortathing!).
The correct inference is that the NC GODLY voters are just having a “grudge fuck” with the notion of civil rights. Those things NEVER end well.
jesse
May 12, 2012 at 1:56 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
Something I found that was really interesting about prop 8 in CA years back. The odds that a county would vote in favor were inversely proportional to the number of people with a college education.
That correlation was stronger than either the number of African-American voters (there was no correlation I could spot) and the number of Latino voters (some correlation, but it was hard to see in the noise).
I’d be interested to see what the county-by-county numbers in NC look like. Something tells me that the Research Triangle area would be overwhelmingly against, while areas in the west and south of the state would be for.
While African-Americans are conservative on some social issues as are Latinos, I’ve noticed that the support for conservative social policy in either group hasn’t been as rock solid as many GOP commentators seem to think. Especially when other issues are even more important. (Then there’s the race-baiting on the part of the GOP; I can’t imagine too many Latino voters saying “this candidate is against gay marriage, and that trumps the fact that he and his party say we should all be shot at the border”).
Chris from Europe
May 12, 2012 at 5:04 pm (UTC -4) Link to this comment
@jesse
Kragar at LGF posted this: http://i.imgur.com/joB7S.jpg