Annabel Lee highlights some stats on the implications of Amendment 1:
An estimated 230,000 couples, mostly straight, will lose their health insurance benefits once the vote is certified… 180,000 children will be removed from CHIP, WIC, and other state benefit programs… Estimates place 125,000 straight marriages as being undone in North Carolina
They are already banned by state law from marrying. Now their own state constitution bans them from any civil rights as couples whatsoever: no domestic partnerships, no civil unions, nothing. It’s an act of pure punishment of citizens who are gay, a deliberate psychological blow to their self-esteem, their sense of citizenship, their core equality as human beings. A 60 percent majority decided that 2 percent of their fellow citizens are and must remain inferior in law.
Timothy Stanley at CNN wonders if marriage equality is “too radical for America”, citing the failure of legislation to pass popular votes:
It’s true that growing numbers of Americans say that they support marriage equality, but then everyone lies to police officers, priests, and pollsters. In every state that has held a popular vote on same-sex marriage, it’s been defeated (that even includes Maine). Take a look at a map of where it has been passed by state legislatures and you’ll see that it’s limited to the bits of the country that overwhelmingly vote Democratic.
I don’t think that matters at all, because one day some smart guys got together and decided to write on paper that all men were created equal, and that they were endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among those were the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And what is marriage, if not a pledge by a couple to mutually pursue happiness? I’m attending a wedding this weekend, if you were attempting to identify the happiest couple in the country, these two would be serious contenders. That their marriage is an integral part of their pursuit of happiness is, to continue borrowing a phrase, self evident. If they happened to be of the same sex, would this not be so?
No, the truly radical idea here is that it is reasonable to deny people rights, treat them as second class citizens, and constitutionally enshrine bigotry against them, all for trying to exercise their unalienable rights, just like everyone else.
And once our old friends in Philadelphia were finished declaring their self evident truths and airing their grievances, they pledged to one another their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. They recognized that they were all in this together. Why can’t we?
520 Chestnut 
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