In the wake of Amendment One's approval, I am so embarrassed to be a North Carolinian. It is a shame to all of us that our state felt it appropriate to hold a vote on the rights of a segment of our population. It is even more shameful that we voted to deny people those rights.
During the Civil Rights struggle, states like ours passed Jim Crow laws to counter decisions of national courts to desegregate Americans. Today we put a new stain on our state's history with the passage of Amendment One. It is the job of our courts to protect our individual rights as Americans from the prejudices and attempted infringements by our neighbors. It is not our job as the voting public to decide who will and will not be afforded the full rights of citizenship based on our personal beliefs.
Beyond its intended purpose of marginalizing our LGBT families, Amendment One has the result of creating new hurdles for women trying to escape abusive situations by not recognizing their domestic partnership if they are unmarried. To force a woman to marry a violent partner just to get any form of court-ordered protection for herself and her children is just inhumane.
While I am proud that our city voted down this hateful amendment, I hope we can manage to keep its statewide passage from affecting what we do locally. Let us be a beacon of hope and equality during these times of division and disempowerment. May we take steps to protect both those in abusive situations and those in loving nontraditional families.
— Isabella Jackson
Asheville
If Mr. Obama can get a couple of new judges on SCOTUS, this law will be nullified, one hopes. But it took just one man campaigning to stop all Americans from having access to birth control. Comstock, his name was.
It was a happy day in the early 60s when his personal choice of keeping women at home and perpetually pregnant was tossed out on its ear and the pill changed our lives.
One person can make a difference, if he treats his preferences as a crusade. So, given the Supremes we have, I fear for the brothers and sisters who don’t fit the radical right’s mold of what is ‘natural’ and what is not. It’s happened before, that a whole group of people (women of childbearing age, then) had government in their bedrooms, and it looks like it’s going to happen again, to another group, those who don’t like being shut in closets and tormented for the way they were born. Ask George Romney about tormenting gays. He’s apparently been there.