Amendment One in NC

As many of you may know, I have lived in North Carolina for most of my life.  I have not, in technical terms "liked" most of it.  Not until I moved to Boone, anyway.  I was hesitant to write anything about Amendment One.  I was pretty sure it wasn't going to pass.  I don't think I knew of a single person who was voting for it.

All I want to say now is "damn."

There is a lot that I could say about Amendment One, but it's all pretty much already been said.  For those of you that don't know, Amendment One was an amendment to the North Carolina constitution that not only defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, but also banned any other sort of domestic partnerships.  Same-sex marriage is already illegal in NC, by the way.

In the words of the proposed amendment:

"Sec. 6. Marriage. Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State. This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts." Doesn't something about that seem fishy to you?  Take a look at that second sentence.  Notice the first sentence does nothing but prohibit a private party from entering into a contract with another private party? I almost don't even want to criticize the legislators on this one.  I really don't.  It's a well-established fact we've apparently got nothing but idiots running the government.  This is one of the few issues the left and the right can seem to agree on.  Let's take a second and focus on the big bag of dicks that actually voted this into law.  As much as I wanted to believe that Amendment One wouldn't pass, a few people have brought up a good point-- did we really expect more than that out of the South?  Yes, I had higher hopes that this state wasn't as ass-backwards as people make it out to be.  There are a lot of great things about North Carolina-- the first public university, the Appalachian Mountains, the outer banks, Krispy Kreme, and of course, Appalachian State University.  This just shows that there's still a lot of work to be done. While part of me is very angry that this passed, part of me knows that I will live to see it overturned.  And I feel confident that one day, my children will look at this chapter in history the same way people my age look at our elders about the civil rights movement.