Gay Marriage was already illegal in North Carolina. That wasn't at issue yesterday. The Amendment was sold as such but the content cast a more broad interpretation that included Gay Marriage along with unwed cohabitation and out-of-wedlock children. There is a litany of unintended consequences for the unwed hetero couples/parents. Nothing changed for the gays.
Joe is hitting the nail on the head so many fucking times in this thread, and nobody's giving him props? Joe, THANK YOU for being the one guy that gets it. Whether you dig on queers marrying, couldn't care less or get your magical underwear knotted up at the thought of crossing swords, the FACT of the matter remains that Constitutions are the laws that define and control GOVERNMENTS, NOT the people. That is the purpose of statutes and legislative action. Additionally, this is precisely the problem that Jefferson warned against with direct democracies. The tyranny of the majority. This sort of shit is an embarrassment to a supposed "free" people. :down:
I wonder what is required for an amendment to get added to the NC Constitution? If I'm not mistaken it takes some serious hoops to get a Constitutional amendment on the ballot in TN.
It took about 8 years. The issue was raised in state congress and after enough votes, revotes, dealmaking, etc they reached a 60% majority in both houses. Then the proposed amendment was put on the ballot for the general election (yesterday's primary). The Cliff Notes of the process can be found here. 60% of the state Congress and 57% of the general voters agreed on this Amendment. And it took 8 years. For such a comfortable margin of agreement it's an arduous process.
I voted Against the Ammendment. My initial feeling was that the wording was too broad and vague to stand on it's own without 20 years of legal challenges shaping the working result into public policy. That doesn't pass the Constitutionally Conservative smell test. We're talking about the point where law in ink becomes law in stone and there shouldn't be any room for unintended consequences there. I was kind of dismissive of the whole movement at that point. The protracted public debate over the issue brought a host of other feelings but none changed my initial impression.
So the second amendment gives the right of a govt militia to arm itself? You're threading into very well armed waters....
Massive fail, Mike. Even someone high on the Mary Jane could get that. Hell, he did. I tend to agree with this. Being homosexual is about as normal as being 7 feet tall: it isn't. But it doesn't mean it is unnatural. And even if homosexuals want it to be called normal, I still don't understand what the problem is with it. Religious and moral authorities seem to be awfully concerned about the mathematical/statistical accuracy of that assertion. Oh, wait, that's not really what's bothering them, is it?
2nd Amendment doesn't give anyone rights. Neither do any of the other amendments. You don't really want schoolin' on this, do you?
A little shy of 35%. That's very high for a primary (~10%) and a little low for a presidential election (~45%). From all the chatter I'm pretty sure everybody has an opinion and 35% voted. In my county there were twice as many votes on Amendment 1 than the Presidential primary. It also led all other vote counts for individual races.
Joe: What percent of NC voters support/are "members" of the Tea Party? I tried the google thing and got nothing that even appraoches the answer to that question.
Except for partners of city/county public employees in counties that recognized domestic partnerships (Durham, Orange, etc). I still feel that the wording is so unclear that I'm torn as to how this will hold up in court. Yes, I've seen the articles about stripping benfits already, but this is just the beginning of a ginormous shit storm that I have no desire to be a part of. And unfortunately, that means staying of facebook for awhile.
Yeah, I had a bunch of HS friends posting FB links on both sides of the issue. I stayed out of the fray.