Topic: NC puts marriage amendment on May ballot referendum

[Pandora]

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina voters will get to decide next May whether ban on same-sex marriage needs to be written into the state constitution after the state Senate voted Tuesday to put the issue on the ballot.

The state House voted 75-42 Monday in favor of the measure. North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast without such a provision.

http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/story/10122896/

More from The John Locke Foundation:

In response to pressure from Democrats, Republican sponsors tried to take a political element out of the equation by scheduling the amendment referendum for the primary election in May rather than the General Election in November. Democrats reportedly had worried that a ballot question in November would prompt greater turnout among conservative voters, hurting Democratic candidates.

See?  It's not just the national R's that qualify as "the stoopit party".

Republicans also added a provision meant to ease liberals’ fears that the amendment would ban private businesses from offering domestic partner benefits to their homosexual employees. The new version clarifies that it doesn’t “prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party.”

Just like the Dems in other states that have included language assuring private businesses would not be harassed and sued for "discrimination" for refusing to host/photograph/cater homosexual affairs, right?  RIGHT?

House Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam, R-Wake, said the amendment is needed to clarify North Carolina law in response to same-sex marriage legalization in other states and to head off intervention from activist judges.

Democrats, on the other hand, said the amendment would write discrimination into the state constitution. “It’s not necessary, and it will have consequences for jobs, because North Carolina will not be as attractive a state to the cutting edge corporations in our economy,” said Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham.

In addition to outlawing same-sex marriage, the amendment could ban civil unions and domestic partner benefits for the same-sex partners of government workers.

I certainly hope it does; why the hell should taxpayers have to foot the bill for them too?!

Rep. Glen Bradley, R-Franklin, was one of three members of the Republican caucus who didn’t vote. After speaking against the measure, Bradley ran an amendment to the bill — which failed 43-71 — that would have revised the ballot question to query whether voters wanted to remove government from marriage entirely.

“Marriage belongs to God exclusively and the state has no business doling out permission for her citizens to wed,” Bradley said. He added that most of Americans’ marital woes are because of government involvement in marriage.

This guy wants to remove the "legal contract" part of marriage?  What then?

He's right about one thing:  most of Americans' woes are because of government involvement ........

[LadyVirginia]

Republicans also added a provision meant to ease liberals’ fears that the amendment would ban private businesses from offering domestic partner benefits to their homosexual employees. The new version clarifies that it doesn’t “prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party.”

 

Domestic partners have been able to get their partner's insurance for years.........................

I wonder how many "partners" would not have access to insurance if not for their partner?  I imagine that number would be small.

...it will have consequences for jobs, because North Carolina will not be as attractive a state to the cutting edge corporations in our economy,” said Rep. Paul Luebke, D-Durham.

cuz those are the only businesses that count--the ones that promote the liberal agenda...

[Pandora]

Kind of surprised no one else has chimed in here; maybe we have the same opinion.  It's stirred a great amount of controversy in NC, though, with Conservatives having it thrown in our faces that we, "the small government people" want this, of all things, legislated.  I've even heard from other Conservatives that "government should get out of the marriage business" and I wonder, then, where do they believe folks ought to go to have their marriage disputes adjudicated/arbitrated, particularly if they're not church-folks.

[Glock32]

I certainly see it as not inconsistent with being "small government". It's a codification of the values of a society. There's no state apparatus instituted by defining marriage, no attendant taxes and fees. Of course the liberals would try to take that whole hypocrisy-angle, but like all of their arguments it is a facile one.

More important than the subject matter is the behavior of the GOP. Are there no bounds to their ineptness? I guess I am just in a glib frame of mind, fatigued of all the political minutiae, because I know the GOP is not the vehicle that will see to the restoration of republican government and this is simply Exhibit 120,530,121.

[LadyVirginia]

I certainly see it as not inconsistent with being "small government". It's a codification of the values of a society.

But no one in the public eye seems to be able to make those distinctions but then a lot of the public wouldn't understand it anyway.

[Pandora]

I certainly see it as not inconsistent with being "small government". It's a codification of the values of a society. There's no state apparatus instituted by defining marriage, no attendant taxes and fees. Of course the liberals would try to take that whole hypocrisy-angle, but like all of their arguments it is a facile one.

More important than the subject matter is the behavior of the GOP. Are there no bounds to their ineptness? I guess I am just in a glib frame of mind, fatigued of all the political minutiae, because I know the GOP is not the vehicle that will see to the restoration of republican government and this is simply Exhibit 120,530,121.

I see it the same way, Glock; a society's values encoded in law.  There is, however, the marriage license fee, to be strictly truthful about it.

Equally fatigued, my friend.