Fellow North Carolinian Voters ...

It's up to you now to prevent discriminatory language regarding the "definition of marriage" from being codified into the State Constitution.

Save the date: Tuesday May 8th, 2012.

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I don't care if you're conservative or liberal, religious or nonreligious, straight or gay, black or white, man or woman, old or young .... discrimination has no place in the Constitution, period.

We're better than that North Carolinians, and I expect you to prove it by voting "No" on this issue in May.

At this point, if I were gay, I almost think I'd feel like going all second grade on them: "I DON'T WANNA BE IN YOUR STUPID MARRIED CLUB ANYMORE!"

You know what really blows me away is that the same people argue for smaller government and less interference with their rights as Americans yet choose to decide that well some Americans just shouldn't have as many rights as I do and be regulated by the government. What ever happened to striving for equality?

Haha!
You have a damned good point.
I wish it were that simple though. Marriage in the USA carries too many financial incentives to just ignore this issue and stop caring about it.

As a very white, very male, very heterosexual North Carolinian, the thought of this referendum passing makes me nauseated. It's difficult to say with certainty, but even if I were a highly religious (Christian) person, I would still vote "no" on this referendum. Separation of church and state is a founding and guiding principle of this nation, and with damned good reason.

This referendum is no different than the old Jim Crow laws ... except it's worse, since it could be codified into the State Constitution.

Old days: We're offended by black people and their way of life, so let's assign them different seating sections on the bus, different water fountains. That way we'll be less exposed to black people, and therefore be offended by black people less often. Maybe the black people will even go away or disappear; wouldn't that be awesome!

Today: We're offended by the thought of gay men kissing and having anal sex, so let's outlaw same-sex marriage. That way, they'll be less likely to publicly proclaim their gayness, and they won't get the same financial incentives as us heterosexuals. Maybe this will convince some gay people to change to being straight!

Same ***, different decade. I don't know what it is about some (many?) Americans, but it's like they think if they aren't discriminating against someone for something all the time, they aren't doing their job right or something.

*** discrimination.

I encourage everyone to vote "no".

Bringing up a whole separate can of worms. Why should married people have any more or less rights/tax incentives/etc than non-married people?

It's one thing to allow churches to "marry" people, it's another for government to treat married couples and live-in couples separately.

I wonder that if there weren't incentives from government, would there ever even be an issue?

There would be an issue about it even if there were no financial incentives. It's about equality.

Can anyone even give a good reason as to why LGBT should not be allowed to marry?

So you're saying that if the government took its hands out of it completely and recognized married people the same as non-married people... but many churches still refused to marry a couple that it didn't see fit, there would be an issue?

You could start your own type of church and print out your own certificates saying that you were married. Government needs to step in and dictate what private churches do?

That has nothing to do with why I disagree with same sex 'marriage'.

And like Mahayaya said, I'm curious as to whether this would be such an issue if the same incentives were offered to live in couples.

Churches have nothing to do with this. They are not asking to be recognized as married by the church, only by the state/federal gov't. If marraige was not recognized by for heterosexuals and homosexuals by the state/federal gov't then there would be no issue. Why does anyone think the Church has anything to do with this at all? Marriage in a church means nothing to the gov't as it is just another place to get married. You need a marraige license from the state to be recognized as a married couple by the state. Getting married in the church is just a faith thing.

I also say no on this. There is a reason it has been almost a world wide law since the beginning of time.

@ Flion and Mahayaya

There is a seperation of church and state in the United States of America. Your faith and my faith have nothing to do with state sanctioned marraige. This is promoting inequality and dicrimination. Why should one group of people have more rights than another?

Could you elaborate a bit? I'm not sure what you're saying no to.

What I'm saying is:

No more state issued marriage certificates. And in the eyes of the law, no more benefits or special cases for "married" people. The state would no longer marry people, and nullify all existing state issued marriage licenses.

Therefore, the only people getting married would be the ones going to churches to do this. But in the eyes of the law, it wouldn't DO anything, just abide to their church "laws".

Would people still care about getting married?


(That's what I meant by "government takes its hands out of marriage" completely in my second post)

its sickening, its twisted, and it is blatant discrimination against the lgbt community.

i dont like it one bit

No need to, its personal opinion. Just gay marriage in some country's and still is used to be a death sentence or life in prison with daily beatings. It offends some people to see this, and it sickens me. Not that I am going to make this personal and vote.

And yes in a way it is involved by churches because this country was founded by religion and tobacco almost. I'm no historian but when laws were made back then along with the constitution it does involve God. Law is the law and should not be changed to make a few people happy. If that's the case why not make meth legal to make the junkies happy?

Most of that's totally off topic, but IMO its all the same.

that makes absolutely no sense, meth is banned because its a dangerous and deadly drug.

have you ever heard of an instance where the act of a gay couple getting married directly puts in danger the life of a person?

no.

in your line of thinking why did they outlaw slavery if it was just to make a few people happy? the law was the law

Being gay is a dangerous and deadly drug.

I don't have much time to get into things at the moment, but I don't think the meth analogy fits. Gay marriage isn't hazardous to your health and effects no one but the two involved. Meth not so much.

AIDs?

Stop

Feeding

Bad

Trolls

I can't speak for everyone but If Churches were the only people allowed to marry anyone and the gov't did not recognize those marraiges then I would say there would no longer be an issue.

I don't see how this is relevant though as this is an imaginary argument as it will never come to pass.

The gov't can't force the church to do things a certain way as the church can't (or shouldn't be able to) for the gov't to do things a certain way.

AIDs doesn't just magically appear from scissoring.

Is no one familiar with the seperation of Church and State in the United States?

It is. Sinners gonna burn.

Only partially true. I know in Pennsylvania, at least, you get issued your marriage license, but you still need to have a ceremony performed by an official recognized by the state to perform the ceremony. This can be a magistrate or other, similar government official, or it can be a member of the clergy from mostly any recognized religious order. I believe they need to sign off on the certificate, as well as another witness. (Some of this may be off, it's been a while since I checked out the rules.)

Most places also don't allow for common law marriages anymore, either. (I know we certainly don't here in Pennsylvania. My "partner" (girlfriend, wife, fiance, whatever; we're officially in an "engaged" status to the world at large) and I have been together for nearly 14 years and we've been living together for 10 -- four years in college and "legally" (registered voters/taxable at the same address) for six. We receive no benefits from the government or our employers (well, they're one in the same, we're both state employees) despite being far more insperable than most other couples, married or no. And ultimately, my guess is that politicians who are against gay marriage or similar domestic partnerships are against it for financial reasons, and just beat the morality drum in order to gain support.


Why not indeed? Though this is not a topic for this thread.

(Edits were used in the making of this post.)

Everyone is familiar with it. Only a portion the people abide by it.

As a gay male in NC this thread makes me really happy. Looking at statistical data gathered in recent past to predict the outcome of this vote it's often said that the overwhelming majority of NC voters will vote no; however, delving deeper into the research there's an awful lot of room for error in the numbers. Relatively small sample sizes and %composition that does not readily reflect the whole of NC. Where I live, the triad, opposition to the amendment appears very strong, but it can also be said that people in this area are more progressively minded than the rest of NC, they're more educated and a huge number of them are from out of town. The possibility of this amendment being passed, and the already devious tactics used to push it through, are troublesome indeed.

In response to the other comments here, you cannot assume that gay people wouldn't want to get "married" if there weren't legal benefits involved. Personally, I'm somewhat of an atheist, but other gay men and women world-wide are devout practitioners of virtually any and every religion. I would propose that the same % of straight men and women who practice Christianity directly correlates to the % of gay men and women who do as well. It is their belief that they are not sinners, they do not believe that the fundamentals of Christianity condemn them, and they believe in the holy sacrament of marriage just as any other Christian does. The religious aspects of marriage are just as important to them, if not more so, than the legal aspects.