How can someone amend the North Carolina Constitution to include discrimination? The N.C. Constitution is meant to protect people’s rights, not take them away.
A group of evangelists and some elected officials want an amendment to our state constitution, banning same-sex marriage. There is already a discriminating law forbidding same-sex couples from getting married—why add an amendment? That’s just wasting our legislators’ time on trivial things, when they should be worried about our economy: “Well, I lost my job today, but that’s OK, ‘cause at least those darn homosexuals can’t get married!”
So you are against gay and lesbian members of the community getting
married. What is it that bothers you about gays and lesbians? Don’t read Leviticus, where homosexuality is condemned. That same book of the Bible mandates the death penalty for sassy kids and fortunetellers, by which standard the Hilton sisters and Miss Cleo should have been iced a long time ago. For that matter, in the same chapter it says you shouldn’t sleep with your neighbor’s wife. Watch Jerry Springer or Maury Povich any day of the week, and you’ll see that one’s being broken. It’s impossible to take literally every passage in the book, unless you want to wind up in prison or a mental ward. So don’t hide behind the Bible.
Let’s be honest here. Why do you condemn gays and lesbians, really? It just feels wrong to you, doesn’t it? At some visceral level, it just seems to offend something fundamental. Hey, I understand. It’s one of the emotional sticking points for heterosexual types, this primeval “ick” factor where homosexuality is concerned. I won’t try to talk you out of it. I will, though, point out that once upon a time, the same gut-level sense of wrong and, for that matter, the same Bible were used to keep Jews from swimming in community pools, women from voting, and black people from riding at the front of the bus. And I do believe the Bible says, “Love thy neighbor,” not “Love thy straight neighbor.”
Have we gotten stuck in a time warp? This issue sounds very familiar. Civil rights movement? You may ask yourself, “How can he compare civil rights to the gay rights movement?” Well, you almost answered your own question. Gay rights are civil rights. In fact, Coretta Scott King said this about her late husband’s vision: “All forms of bigotry and discrimination are equally wrong and should be opposed by right-thinking Americans everywhere. I appeal to everyone who believes in Martin Luther King Jr.‘s dream to make room at the table of brotherhood and sisterhood for gay and lesbian people.”
Thank you for listening to the other side, and please contact your state
senator and representative and voice your opinion against this amendment.
— Chris Priddy
Asheville
There is an easy solution to the “marriage” saga.
Give the same legal rights to all who want to “marry” and call it a civil union, performed at the court house. Leave “marriage” to the church and those who feel they need to follow that route.
To discriminate against gays wanting to marry is wrong, just as it was wrong to prohibit black people to marry whites, or gays to serve in the military. Discrimination against any person, whether over color or sexual orientation is discrimination and as such an abomination that needs to end now! While it is somewhat understandable for the religious right to attempt to legislate their ideas of morals or values upon the rest of us. Put quite simply; how the heck does a gay person’s marriage affect anyone outside that marriage? I’m not gay and neither hetero nor gay marriage affects me. My life is not affected in anyway by another’s behavior. Until someone else’s behavior affects me directly I have no right to condemn another’s actions. Conversely, what I do in the privacy of my own home does not affect anyone outside my home and hence does not concern them! This ongoing debate, just like flag burning, abortion and gay marriage are the last straws of the evangelicals to spread their way of believeing and living. The recurring debate about these subjects wastes valuable time and assets in government and quite frankly we can not afford to waste either in these times of need. And lastly; if a church or religion needs the government to legislate or protect their concept of “morals”, then it becomes apparant that that religion probably is on shaky ground to begin with and lacking of substance.