By Paul Ribeiro, North Carolina Family Policy Council
Why same sex marriage may be coming to NC sooner than you think
On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court defied centuries of recorded history, declaring that same-sex couples have the fundamental right to marry. It would be easy to shrug in indifference; after all, California is over two thousand miles away. Not only that, anyone familiar with popular culture expects that kind of craziness to come from the land of Hollywood. It could never happen in North Carolina, folks believe. After all, this is the South—the “Bible belt”—where there are more traditional views about things like marriage. The truth is, North Carolina may be more vulnerable to the threat of same-sex marriage than any other state in the South—in part due to its lack of a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman—and may be targeted in the near future by homosexual activists seeking to overturn its marriage laws. Read the rest of this entry
Note from the executive director: The California Effect was written before voters in California overturned same-sex marriage with the approval of a constitutional amendment (Proposition 8) on November 4, 2008. Nevertheless, the judicial means to legalize gay marriage discussed in this article provides the blueprint gay activists would use to legalize same-sex marriage in the Tar Heel State. It was a constitutional amendment that overrode judicial activism favoring same sex marriage in California and it is the only protection North Carolina would have against the same.
