Another State Bans Gay Marriage: North Carolina

Recently, North Carolina banned gay marriage with Amendment 1 to its State Constitution.

This is a travesty and a failure for the UNITED States of America, which last I checked, North Carolina is still a member.

It is NOT ok to put to popular vote what is a basic human right granted to all Americans in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

' Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'

Banning same-sex marriage (especially by popular vote) was also wrong back in 2008, when California passed its Proposition (H)8, banning same-sex marriage here and undermining the legal-right same-sex couples had before election day. No basic human-right afforded to Americans should ever be put to popular vote. How would black Americans have fared if slavery were put to popular vote, or Jim Crow laws? How would women fare were reproductive rights put to popular vote?

This is the United States of America. What is the point in having a union if states can just trample on the rights of a minority? What is the point of having a 14th amendment that ostensibly governs states if states can simply draft their own ridiculous, discriminatory laws based on the flawed sensibilities of an obviously bigoted majority vote?

A state may have its own Constitution, but that doesn't mean North Carolina gets to act like North Korea within a free, secular and democratic republic. Banning gay marriage violates the 14th amendment, it violates fairness, any whiff of logic and the rights of the few should never be voted-on by the majority. This is a failure of democracy, and our democratic republic has historically protected the minority from the whims of the majority. Why is same-sex marriage confusing or different?

We should all be treated-equally under the law and this must necessarily include marital-status equality, even though I don't believe marital-status is a protected-class yet (it will be soon, just watch). Fewer Americans are getting married in-general, and unmarried households now outnumber married households according to a USA Today poll conducted in 2006. My personal response to marriage is to boycott the institution entirely because of discrimination against same-sex couples but also the favoring of marriage over non-marriage. In my own 14-year heterosexual relationship, my girlfriend cannot even share her health-insurance with me, someone she lives with and owns a home with, because we're unmarried and opposite-sex. While I personally disagree with marriage, I understand that all consenting-age Americans deserve equal rights under the law.

It's time to step-in and do the right thing by legalizing gay-marriage at the Federal level. Obama, now that you've openly-stated that you personally believe that gay people should be allowed to marry, it's time to make that happen as soon as you're re-elected in November (if not sooner). You won't gain votes by pussyfooting around this issue, but you will potentially alienate some of your most vigorous supporters—and not everyone who is for gay-marriage is a Democrat. You will earn respect from both sides if you unflinchingly stand up for what's right. Those who are against gay-marriage probably know that this is legally unfair but they're just bigots. Bigots aren't necessarily trying to be fair so there's no point in trying to attract their vote by appearing 'uncertain' on the issue.

The ethical choice is crystal clear here. Either the government gets out of the marriage business or allows ALL consenting adults to marry whom they wish. It's about time marriage stopped being a blunt instrument of discrimination. After all, it wasn't too long ago that miscegenation laws preventing interracial marriage, which was ended in with the landmark Loving v. Virgina legal challenge and ultimate Supreme-Court victory in 1965. Let's not wait for courts to be flooded with expensive and time-consuming discrimination lawsuits which will end in the same result anyway...which is same-sex marriage being legalized. To those in North Carolina who voted in support of this Amendment, you just cost your taxpayers a pretty-penny in legal costs with all the challenges that are a'comin' and you still got it wrong.

2012 should be the year gay-marriage is made legal in all states. Eventually we will wonder why this was ever a contentious issue. I have a feeling that Obama will take a much stronger stance in his second term, but I wish it were sooner.

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