Fish Wrap: North Carolina Gay Marriage Amendment Likely To Pass

Back in March I was wondering whether or not to vote for Amendment 1, because it stops all civil unions. I did the early voting thing on Thursday, and, after much soul searching, voted in favor of Amendment 1. Nate Silver thinks, once you get past all the leftist hand-wringing and obfuscation, that it will pass.

On Tuesday, North Carolina will vote on a state constitutional amendment that declares, “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized,” thereby banning recognition of same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships of any kind.

Both recent polls of the state and an analysis of past ballot initiatives in other states suggest that the measure,  Amendment 1, is likely to pass, although there is ambiguity over the outcome because of voter confusion about what the amendment seeks to achieve. (snip)

The most recent poll was conducted by Civitas Institute, a conservative think tank whose poll results have generally shown little partisan bias in the past. That survey polled Democratic and Republican primary voters separately, but projected that the measure would win by 16 percentage points when it combined the results.

I’m still not particularly happy with the civil unions ban, but, it is what it is.

A significant number of North Carolinians have already cast votes in the primaries through early balloting. According to the Civitas Institute, which tracks these statistics, about 160,000 Democratic ballots and  130,000 Republican ballots have been requested so far. One hopeful sign for opponents of the amendment is that an especially large number of ballots have been cast in Durham County and Wake County, which are home to colleges like Duke University and are socially liberal.

That may be so, but many are also very religious. I spent quite a bit of time talking about it with a Black pastor who lives in Durham, and was the one who convinced me through both religious and non-religious points in the validity of the Amendment. Many others feel the same, because, yes, this is very much a religious issue. No matter how many personal slurs and insults opponents of the Amendment throw, many people have beliefs. We’ll see what happens Tuesday night.

More: Donald Douglas discusses the same article and points out that this could have national implications vis a vis the general election.

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5 Responses to “Fish Wrap: North Carolina Gay Marriage Amendment Likely To Pass”

  1. david7134 says:

    There is something more to this marriage business than what is on the surface. After all, marriage in the view of the state is only a contract between two people. Marriage as such is up to the churches and what their tolerance is for variation. I pointed this out to a gay friend and that all he had to do to be “married” was to work up a contract between himself and his partner. But this was not good enough. He wanted the manditory contract provided by the state. I pointed out that a personal contract would be much better, but that did not work. I got the impression that other issues are involved.

  2. I’ve always thought that marriage is a religious institution and it ßhould be up to the church to decide whether or not to marry gays. But once government got involved and started requiring a government license that has a fee, well, it became the domain of things like amendments

  3. Xrlq says:

    I’m not sure I understand why anyone who opposes a constitutional ban on civil unions would vote for this dreadful amendment. Apart from (maybe) stripping government employees of domestic partner benefits, what else is this amendment supposed to accomplish?

  4. […] William Teach has more. Comments […]

  5. I’m actually slightly regretting my vote in favor.

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