May 8 is primary election day, and every registered voter (you can register through April 13) will have a chance to vote on candidates for a Congressional seat, two Buncombe County commission seats (and the commission chair), and numerous state legislative (House and Senate) seats. That same day, all registered voters will have the opportunity to vote on an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution.

The ballot will read FOR or AGAINST the amendment, which reads,
“Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union
that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”

For the first
time since the Jim Crow era after the Civil War, the politicians and
big-money corporations behind this amendment are attempting to limit,
rather than expand, the rights of North Carolina citizens. It has been
almost a century since civil rights were limited by the NC Constitution,
but this amendment would turn the state back toward that ugly past, in
which some people are more worthy of civil rights than others.

North Carolina state law already disallows gay marriage, but this amendment goes much further. It would:

• Prohibit cities, counties, towns, or the state from allowing any sort of civil unions;

• Bar the cities, counties, towns, or the state from instituting domestic partnership rights;


Strip the domestic partner insurance benefits currently offered to
employees by a number of local governments, including Asheville, Chapel
Hill, Durham, Greensboro, and Mecklenburg and Orange Counties.

In
addition, courts could interpret the language of the Amendment to ban
any rights to the state’s hundreds of thousands of unmarried
couples—both same- and opposite-gender. This would:

• Invalidate domestic violence protections for all unmarried partners;

• Undercut existing child custody and visitation rights that are designed to protect the best interests of children;


Prevent the state from allowing unmarried couples to have burial
rights, make medical decisions if the partner is incapacitated; or allow
two-parent adoptions in order to ensure that both partners have a legal
tie to, and financial responsibilities for, the children they are
raising.

• Invalidate trusts, wills, and end-of-life directives by one partner in favor of the other.”

A
wide coalition of organizations supporting civil rights for all
citizens oppose this Amendment, including the North Carolina branch of
the NAACP; the NC Democratic Party; the North Carolina Council of
Churches; and ACLU, and the Asheville-Buncombe League of Women Voters.
We urge voters to do so, too, by voting AGAINST the constitutional
amendment.