Amendment One Battle Lost, but Young Will Win War

Sunday, May 13, 2012

The passing of Amendment One obviously did little to dampen the spirits of N.C. citizens who support marriage equality. In fact, it has ignited their passion further.

Protect N.C. Families, the UNC Coalition Against Amendment One, Equality N.C., and countless other groups and organizations have been tirelessly canvassing, phone-banking, and rallying for months to raise awareness of the amendment and educate voters about its potential harmful effects. For these activists, the pain of the amendment's passing hit the most deeply.

But they clearly have no plans to hang their heads in defeat.

Various social media sites showed the outrage on election night, with people posting Facebook statuses like "Not a proud day to be a North Carolinian" and "This is disgusting!" An immediate measure was taken to change the name of the anti-amendment Facebook page from "Vote Against Amendment One" to "Repeal Amendment One." A petition titled "1 Million Against Amendment One" was posted on change.org within minutes, and it garnered more than 100,000 signatures in less than 24 hours.

A loud voice behind this post-election outcry has come from the younger generation, a group that shows a nearly three-quarters majority nationwide in support of gay marriage, according to a recent Gallup poll.

Of the seven North Carolina counties that reported a majority vote against the amendment, six include within their borders a university and a large student population, including Orange (UNC-Chapel Hill), Durham (Duke University), and Buncombe (UNC-Asheville).

Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt, who is openly gay, said at the Vote Against Festival on UNC-Chapel Hill's campus two weeks ago, "It's not a stretch to say that [students] can be the reason we defeat the amendment." And it's certainly not a stretch to say that these young, energetic and informed people - the future leaders of this state - will be the reason North Carolina soon brings it down for good.

Sorry to the 63 percent of Moore County voters who felt the need to define "marriage between one man and one woman" as "the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state." You won the battle, but you won't win the war.

The current campaign for marriage equality is strikingly similar to the civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, when equality for minorities and for women was at stake. Southern conservatives and traditionalists, in part because of religious or moral beliefs, were uncomfortable with the extension of rights to these groups. But once anti-discrimination laws were in place, people accepted them as just.

Discrimination surfaced again when N.C. citizens voted to preserve, in the words of amendment supporter Tony Perkins, "the historic and natural definition of marriage." They have a right to that belief.

But when people like Mr. Perkins make claims about "the unique benefits that marriage between a man and a woman brings to families and society" and use such reasoning to amend the state constitution to deny equal rights, there is a problem. Other types of families - such as gay or unmarried couples - can confer valuable benefits to society as well.

Many members of the older generation are firmly set in their beliefs that any legal marriage outside of the "natural" one is an abomination. But despite the passing of Amendment One, the efforts to bring justice to all people of this state and of this nation are far from finished.

The tide is turning on the marriage equality front. More than two-thirds of Americans in 1996 said they did not believe gay marriage should be valid, but that number has dropped below the 50 percent mark in 2012. Even President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have in the past two weeks publicly come out in support of legalizing gay marriage.

And as an open-minded and tolerant younger generation assumes the leadership roles in North Carolina over the next few decades, I'm confident that our state can follow the example of these two national leaders, repeal Amendment One and the law forbidding marriage equality, and lead this country in a push for true "liberty and justice for all."

Sarah Brown, a graduate of The O'Neal School, is a rising sophomore at UNC-Chapel Hill.

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The_AnonymusProfit 1 year ago

Ok its really about time to move on to a new subject, leave the A1 argument alone for a few weeks,...

Bentpan 1 year ago

The one sure thing is that the views of the young will change as they mature and gain new experiances in life. Remember most boomer babies like myself were the flower power children of the 60s early 70s, then most of us grew up. 61% of voters said yes, as usual hypocrit liberals love the idea of democracy, as it goes their way otherwise it's just majority fascism, Right?

OldPilot 1 year ago

With a 30% voter turnout 61% = 18.3% of those eligible to vote did so for Amendment 1. NC = a state where a gay/lesbian may serve in the military and die for their country but not get married.

nothingspecial 1 year ago

Sure, 41 states who have voted for "traditional" marriage over the past few years were really the minority. And our ever shrinking numbers of young people, most of which according to the author were against the amendment, but either slept in that day or weren't old enough to vote, will overturn this someday, got it.

Any chance now our liberal friends can talk about something different?

OldPilot 1 year ago

"....ever shrinking numbers of young people....."? Just who do think the future is? It's one thing to be on the wrong side of history, it's another to be deaf/blind/stupid, with all due respect.

kayaker 1 year ago

Courts in California have already ruled that gay marriage bans violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Which means millions of NC tax dollars will now be wasted in lawsuits because 61 percent of voters had no idea what they were voting on. Congratulations?

The_AnonymusProfit 1 year ago

Courts in California dont count in the rest of the United States. While I voted against the amendmet, some interesting points have come up, I am married, I recently met a woman who is very keen on me, So can I marry her as well?

kayaker 1 year ago

Courts in California set the precedent for any future violations, anywhere, of the 14th amendment. But at least this vote accomplished one thing - the rest of the world now sees all citizens of North Carolina as backwoods bigoted rednecks.

The_AnonymusProfit 1 year ago

No they dont kayaker, NC is just 1 state in 31 that has done this, thats more then half the country, only 11 states allow gay marriage, and its not legal in most of the world either.

katimae 1 year ago

While I am thrilled to see all of the posts against Amendment One, I can't help but wonder where all these people were on primary day. My guess is that the young people who so vehemently opposed it couldn't be bothered to go to the polls. I don't believe the 61% majority represents how all North Carolinians feel-it just represents those who bothered to vote. Amazing that all these petitions can come out with hundreds of thousands of signatures when all they had to do to beat the amendment was VOTE.

The_AnonymusProfit 1 year ago

Katime, I have enjoyed your posts, I even referenced one, but you have to understand how voting works, very few people actually vote, the people posting all voted im sure, but you have registered voters and likely voters. If 50% of the population votes thats incredible. And its been a fact in the south that the christian right votes more then the left.

kayaker 1 year ago

And all 31 states are now violating the 14th amendment. The California vote has been pushed through multiple appeals, all of which have agreed with the first ruling. Its now going to the Supreme Court which will, obviously, rule the same as all the other courts before. Therefore making the ban in all 31 states invalid and unconstitutional.

kayaker 1 year ago

May 8th was specifically picked by the GOP to make the generally left-leaning college student vote difficult. Most college students across the state had finals on election day.

pgericson 1 year ago

W@kayaker Whether or not states are violating the 14th Amendment remains to be seen. The Supreme Court has yet to address this issue, and there is no guarantee that it will apply the 14th Amendment to all states vice leaving it up to the individual states to decide. The same circuit court that violated California's proposition eight determined the pledge of allegiance with the words 'under God' to be unconstitutional in 2002: this ruling has yet to be affirmed/denied by the Supreme Court. I would think the Court would like to stay clear of this issue for the time being.

SarahBrown 1 year ago

To go off of what kayaker said, UNC's final day of exams was May 4th, so pretty much everyone had gone home by the time the primary came around. When I was working with other UNC students to register students to vote, some who were voting for the first time admitted that they wouldn't have bothered to vote if we hadn't been there to sign people up and tell them over and over how important voting in this primary was because of the amendment. We did what we could to get students to vote early while they were still on campus, and we had a decent student turnout. But, even though many state universities either passed official resolutions against the amendment or released statements affirming their opposition to it, I can't be certain that all of them made the same kind of effort as we did to actually get their students to the polls. Also, a fair number of youth who opposed it were still too young to vote, such as 16-year-old Ian Maynor, who wrote this wonderful letter to the editor at the end of March:

Amendment Won't Protect Families