Early voting starts next week. Election day for the May 8 primary elections is just four weeks away. Amendment 1, the anti-gay amendment, must be defeated. To defeat it, must it first be "de-gayed"?
I first heard that term when I called Jim Neal a few days ago to talk about how the campaign against Amendment 1 was going. Neal, who ran in the 2008 Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and is gay, shared my concern that the campaign was taking every tack except a straight-up argument in favor of equality for all and equal protection under the law (that quaint term in the U.S. Constitution) for LGBT and straight folks.
Neal said he'd heard it from Evan Degnan, who'd helped with his campaign and is a friend. Degnan wrote a wonderful piece on his blog a month ago entitled, "Thoughts on Combating the Marriage Amendment." It began:
"Listening to the rhetoric from progressives around the constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot in May, one might think the amendment has nothing to do with marriage, equality or the LGBT community."
Instead, Degnan wrote, what you hear from the progressive side — our side — is that Amendment 1 will hurt children. And families. In general. What you don't hear is that this amendment is intended to humiliate and marginalize LGBT people, even though that's exactly what it's intended to do.
So in the last 24 hours, our side has gotten two enormous boosts.
From the Coalition to Protect NC Families, the anti-Amendment 1 campaign team, came a video yesterday featuring former Charlotte Mayors Harvey Gantt and Richard Vinroot. Gantt, the beloved Democrat and Charlotte's first African-American mayor, who very nearly knocked off Jesse Helms in the '96 Senate race; and Vinroot, the 2000 Republican nominee for governor, who continues to be the kind of decent-thinking Republican you remember if, like me, you once voted for some Republicans.
Gantt and Vinroot underlined the "serious unintended consequences" that might occur if Amendment 1 is passed, including the harm it may cause women, children and families. To be sure, Gantt also mentions that Amendment 1 would "write discrimination" into the N.C. constitution — though he doesn't specify who'd be discriminated against.
Then this morning, the N&O published an op-ed column entitled "Amendment goes too far." Written by David Blankenhorn and Elizabeth Marquandt, well-known conservatives on the "family values" (i.e., anti-women's rights/anti-gay rights) front, it begins:
"We are native Southerners, and we oppose legalizing same-sex marriage."
Strange, then, that the two of them go on to make a stronger case against Amendment 1 than our side is making.
