marriage discrimination amendment

North Carolina is featured in this week's Marriage News Watch because early voting has begun in North Carolina. In fact, it started last week on the 19th, but for many counties around the state the full slate of early voting sites waited to open until this week. Do you know where your early voting site is?

While there is an official campaign to defeat Amendment One out there, we have to recognize that there are many, many people working at the grassroots level, residents of North Carolina putting in countless hours to educate voters on their own time and dime because they feel passionately that this discriminatory amendment is wrong for the state that they call home. They find a niche to effectively counter the anti-gay, anti-logical arguments out there.

In this case, I wanted to spotlight a local effort -- responding to op-eds and letters to the editor (LTEs) in our local and regional papers that have been, as you might expect, populated with anti-gay, fear-driven, often religion-based arguments in favor of Amendment One. LTEs are powerful tools, and Durham resident Steve Bocckino helped build a roster of residents eager and willing -- sometimes for the first time -- to write what have become extremely effective pro-equality, anti-Amendment One arguments.  A self described "60-year-old white guy, straight, and married for 21 years," Steve wanted to make a difference. Here's my Q&A with him.

As I mentioned in a recent blog entry, I was very excited to see the Greenville City Council come out against the discriminatory amendment one! But that doesn't mean a lot unless we turn it into votes against the amendment. So I wanted to give a warm invite to anyone who can help us out with this on campus anti-amendment event at ECU on Tuesday. They only have on campus voting for 1 week, so we have to make the most of it!

I'm just back from a Greenville City Council meeting where the council took up the issue of amendment one, and where many students, members of the general public, and myself spoke out against the amendment. The council voted by a strong majority to oppose the hateful, discriminatory, and overreaching amendment one.

Reasons varied from supporting equality, opposing discrimination, keeping government overreach out of our lives, and protecting domestic violence victims. During the budget discussion leading up to the amendment resolution vote, Greenville was referred to as North Carolina's jewel of the east. Tonight they lived up to that reputation.

With only 2.5 weeks left until voting begins, this week's marriage news watch is heavily focused on North Carolina. It's also the last day of the money bomb. Make it count!

Here's this week's installment of Marriage News Watch. It highlights some scary poll numbers for NC, but also highlights help from unlikely places. Only 3 weeks until early voting starts. Support Protect NC Families money bomb happening this week only. We've got to get onto the air to change those numbers.

http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/story/10866062/

The Obama campaign issued a statement Friday, calling the proposed amendment discriminatory.

Opponents of the measure say it would enshrine discrimination in the state's constitution and could have unforeseen consequences in other aspects of law including domestic violence protection orders...

From Tea Party supported Republican Congresswoman Renee Ellmers to President Obama, the bipartisan opposition to the amendment is growing! And every time it does, that's one more mention in the news about why this amendment is such a bad thing for our state. Spread the news, and ask your local elected officials to come out against the amendment too! With this diverse of a field against it, they've got all the political cover they could ever need to do the right thing.

Well, naysayers out there who said that the President would not say a peep about the discriminatory Amendment One in NC because it's an election year (even though he did so in 2008 for Prop 8), you'll have to eat crow. His campaign obviously "did the math" and decided it was the right thing to do to release a statement opposing it.

Kudos to WRAL and Laura Leslie for this deeper coverage of the rally today. A lot of stations went for a more "fair and balanced" oversimplification approach pitting it as a pro-marriage equality versus anti-marriage equality story, without digging into the effects of the amendment at all.

http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/story/10858711/

Opponents of the measure say it would enshrine discrimination in the state's constitution and could have unforeseen consequences in other aspects of law including domestic violence protection orders, which supporters deny.

"It's really simple: This isn't about being gay or being straight. This is about being equal," march organizer Corey Livengood said. "I'm not different than you or your daughter or your son or your brother or your mother in that I deserve the same rights anyone else does."

This occurred last week but we've got a new video of Mayor Bill Bell's statement about the Amendment. I'm so proud of my town.

On Thursday, March 8, in a 6-0 vote, the city of Durham’s councilmembers encouraged voters to cast their upcoming ballots against an amendment to the state constitution that would strip the local government of the ability to provide domestic partner benefits such as health care to its public employees and their children, among other harms.