North Carolina yesterday became the 30th state to ban same-sex marriage. Early results showed the amendment to its Constitution passing overwhelmingly by as much as 61 percent. The popularity of the amendment and key position of North Carolina in the upcoming presidential election appears to have prompted the White House to cancel an event in the state. President Obama cancelled a scheduled trip to North Carolina on the day of the vote. While Obama opposed the amendment last year, this week the White House was ridiculed by the media over the President’s refusal to support gay marriage and his insistence that his views were still “evolving” on the subject. The cancellation was widely viewed as an effort to avoid renewed questions over Obama’s refusal to take a clear stand on the civil rights question.
There was a huge turnout on Tuesday in North Carolina — attributed to the draw of the referendum. The proposed amendment states that “marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”
North Carolina is viewed as a key target with Virginia for both campaigns. The vote reflects the division in the state with more liberal urban areas opposing the amendment while more conservative rural areas supporting it.
Just for the record, I have long advocated that the solution to this debate is to get rid of “marriage” licenses in favor of a universal civil union standard — which is closer to the function of the state recording of such unions. I believe that marriage should be left to individual faiths and institutions as a religious-based concept. The role of the state is to record a civil commitment of two individuals to live as one couple. The current debate — including the demand for retroactive termination of marriages — shows how the term marriage continues to inject religiosity into what is a civil contract between citizens.
Notably, the last time North Carolina amended its Constitution on marriage was in 1875 when it banned interracial marriage. That ban only ended in 1971.
Source: CNN
@ Mike Spindell: About 15 years ago I had a remarkable phone conversation with a woman whose name I cannot remember. We were trying to brain-storm a child abuse case in which the state agency was acting even stupider than we were accustomed, and suddenly we were beseiged with people who wanted us to “give us your cases” so they could brief them to this or that “powerful person.” I found it astonishing that people we had been trying to get an audience with were now asking us to “give [them] our cases” — as if we had some kind of “corner on the market” and they wanted to get in on the game.
She gave me some insights and then she said, “Remember, victims are a commodity.”
Huh?
She said that there were plenty of organizations, and some government agencies, that could take down grant money from this or that source if they could show that they had a lot of “cases” and the money was necessary. They wouldn’t offer ANY HELP AT ALL, but they wanted to “collect victims.”
I couldn’t get that cynical at the time. I spent about three months writing up “cases” for all these allegedly interested people. There were no results at all except that I had to buy a new ink cartridge.
“She gave me some insights and then she said, “Remember, victims are a commodity.” Huh? She said that there were plenty of organizations, and some government agencies, that could take down grant money from this or that source if they could show that they had a lot of “cases” and the money was necessary. They wouldn’t offer ANY HELP AT ALL, but they wanted to “collect victims.””
Malisha,
My last job before becoming disabled and retiring was running a drug prevention program for a very well-known foster care agency. Child Welfare has always been a passion of mine and I worked 8 years at it in NYC’s agency as an expert in abuse investigation. At this Agency I was now on the other side of the case, where children went when we placed them. I worked for their group home division. The people there were good people with good intentions, however, it seemed they related more to the kids who knew how to play to their feelings and were punitive towards those kids with emotional issues. I don’t think it was conscious on their parts, rather they lacked insight into themselves. The other thing I learned before illness caused me to leave was how invested they were in the money aspect of the service. This struck me as odd since they were a religious, well-endowed non-profit. I worked for 3 different no-profits in my career and in all cases, with those 3, money was more important than mission.
Curiosity Killed the Cat:
Nice evasion of the gist of my point as the “irrefragable fact” I was referring to weren’t the minor details of the exact prize she won nor which first official act but rather the fact that virtually all non-partisan experts in international law viewed her death the result of a war crime.
Talk about a legacy of abused women in Clinton’s wake!
Yet this proven example was only his first war crime. Other’s followed, as in Sudan with the infamous “Wag the Dog” bombing of the baby formula factory and of course in the Balkans, nevermind all the CIA black ops perpetrated those 8 years that framed up, railroaded & murdered union leaders throughout the 3rd world & Liberation Theologist nuns who defended the poor.
FYI — I used to teach Sociology at the University level but of course my finals questions weren’t drawn hurriedly from 20 year old memory for a blog 30 minutes before having to rush to work.
Res ipsa loquitur
Karl,
So much for your “irrefragable facts”…..
Good lord. I hope you aren’t a high school history teacher preparing the final exam. Your students don’t stand a chance.
Curious,
I should have known for I was at a big meeting on Tues and heard people talking about the “latest stunt” but since I was involved with a committee that was reviewing other proposed legislation, I didn’t pay attention to the stunt conversation. My bad.
HB 194 had been voted in during the 2011 season but wasn’t going to take effect until the 2012 election in November which was when the referendum was also scheduled to be on the ballot.
The game playing could drive one insane. What will be really weird is if the democrats decide to test the constitutionality of the repeal. Having already forced the republicans to back off … it’s crazy here!
People are afraid of what and who they don’t know.
One suggestion is that the organized gay movement could have a reach out program to conservatives. I was thinking the elderly. My thought is that gay activists could wear T-shirts with a name like Gays for Family Values and help the elderly scan their family photos and put them on the internet. Then they could show them their family photos and evolve from seeming threatening to nonthreatening.
Karl,
You can’t supply the name of the poet? You remember it was the VERY first thing Clinton did in office. You remember the city, the date and what beverage was being consumed and you can’t remember the name of this Nobel poet? Well guess what. There is no Iraqi woman who wrote poetry and won the Nobel that might have been in Iraq on the day that you ask us to recall. Now tell me why I should believe anything else you have to say
CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT:
The Iraqi Woman that Clinton murdered with a Tomahawk missile was named Layla Al-Attar.
Turns out her daughter was also permanently blinded in the attack.
Turns out about a dozen civilians were killed, not more than a hundred, but still enough to constitute a war crime.
Forgive my memory lapse but turns out she wasn’t a prize winning poet but rather a medal winning painter/artist & director of the Iraqi National Art Museum.
Here’s some of her art: http://www.iraqiart.com/artists/l_attar.htm
Kris Kristofferson even wrote a song by her called “The Circle”.
It also turns out this cowardly attack wasn’t exactly random as I originally thought but rather her apartment building that was demolished happened to be in the way of the Iraqi Intelligence Building so she’s what in Orwellian speak the Pentagon calls “collateral damage.”
Also turns out that it was his first military action as commander in chief instead of his first official act in the white house.
Still not too bad a memory for having read a single article back in June of ’93.
Meanwhile you can believe what I say as the truth but of course you don’t have to let facts get in the way of your voting behavior.
Alas Turley voted for Clinton’s second term despite this war crime but when it comes to Obama’s 2nd term he won’t get burned again.
Blouise
Please, no apologies necessary. I hope your comment was meant to be taken lightly as was my original “heart” complaint. I picked up on the date of SwM’s link to ThinkProgress which was dated July 2011. Neither of you should be expected to know that it had been repealed the day before yesterday.
@Karl Friedrich – Many people are confused by the various “isms” as I call them colletively. Marx’s 1st Platform is the abolistion of all private property. What society today defines as Communism – FNMA and FREDDIE MAC are our examples but so is Central Park and all govenment owned properties. It does not really matter how the State controls the profits of both individuals and businesses and the redistribution of those funds, the results end up being the same. Whether your system is fascist, marxist, socialist or communist, it ends up being controled by centrally determined political power and not by the free markets as Adam Smith and our founding fathers had invisioned. People don’t want to look at government as the power brokerage catel it is because it has been so ingrained in us that government is a necessity. How can something be a necessity that doesn’t work for the benefit of the majority and instead almost always ends up redistrbuting the wealth of the majority into the hands of the super wealthy and their cronies. Under the Monarchs the cronies where the aristocracy. Things haven’t really changed that much. We just now have the historical and imperical evidence that no govenment so far incorporated into law has worked to achieve peace an prosperity for the majority, over the long term. I’ve written about this in much greater detail and will be publishing it in the near future. Over history many people have written about the various systems and how they work or might work. The web is changing the entire communications experience and over time I will predict that many of the prior misconceptions of political economy will become obvious to a greater number of people.
The recent Atlas Shrugged movie on Rand’s book of the same name, which I recomend all should see, is filled with this same quote “From each according to their ability — to each according to their need” in the context of the government giving that reason for legislation being adopted that increases the level of government central planning and takeover of various businesses and industries; the 1st platform of communism.
In my opinion, what people don’t want to beleive about Marx is that his real target was not the majority/proletariat but the ruling classes of the world. He basically gave them the guide to take back the controlls over the means of production after the American, French and British Revolutions. it was a scam perpitrated against the proletariat and many having fallen for it. I think it was Bastiat that stated that, communism is the means to still the wealth of any nation when he was writing is essays to defend against those in the French Leglislature that were trying to introduce Marx’s platforms.
We get all tied up in trying to define the various terms, instead of looking at the results or the negative ramifications of the multitude of laws enacted. We have the largest military indutrial complex in the world and the greatest percentage per capita of incarcerations in the world. We’re at least first in two areas. Sadly in the areas you want to be in we’re not doing that well, and we are comparing ourselves against communist, fascists, monarchies and even totalitarian regimes.
gbk,
You know … Anthony Comstock is under-appreciated.
“they were liquidating their assets” … what a lovely way to put it
Blouise,
Well, with Comstock being gone I suppose I could mail it, but now that I think about it I’m worried it would get lost. I found the book in the Spartan Library at the now defunct Jim Jones University when they were liquidating their assets in the late ’70s. Let me think about it.
“No problem. Let me know if you want to borrow Weston B. Smith’s tome, as only one-hundred copies were printed and it’s nowhere to be found on the internet!” (gbk)
How did you obtain a copy? If I borrow it will we have to insure it through the post office? If we do, how much? Can we afford it?
hskiprob:
It’s quite true there’s few notions more totalitarian than Obama’s decree that his admin. has the right to be judge, jury & executioner for every human being, however it’s clear you’ve never read a single word of Marx but rather only have a Fox News level of understanding about him and his views which were not only the abolition of all taxes but all money in general and private property in the means of production in particular, an idea summed up in the famous motto that society should strive for: “From each according to their ability — to each according to their need.”
Only a right wing ignoramus would argue that this 99% versus 1% state of affairs we live under today has been in any way, shape or form been influenced by Marx, an idea that is as patently absurd as the notion that Obama is some kind of Marxist.
Curious,
I’m sorry … the info was one day old. On May 8th (Tues) of this year the Republicans passed Senate Bill 295 to repeal HB 194. HB 194 was scheduled for a referendum in Nov. which the republicans figured they would lose so for the first time in the history of the state the legislators repealed a bill up for referendum.
Democrats unanimously opposed the repeal of House Bill 194, originally a GOP-backed election law passed last year. They said it subverts Ohio citizens’ constitutional right to referendum.
Although I understand why the Ohio democrats are upset about the republicans’ successful attempt on Tuesday to avoid an embarrassing loss at the polls in November, I’m grateful that it was done now for reasons that should be obvious. However, the Constitutionality of repealing a bill that is up for referendum remains a question for the State.
Once again, I apologize to you and your heart. I wasn’t trying to give erroneous info, I honestly didn’t know that the bill had been repealed on Tuesday when I wrote about it on Weds.
The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. – Thomas Jefferson
Sadly not even the greatest Constitution ever written can stop the tyranny of govenrment.
Mike: I took you to school on Vaclav Havel less than a year ago and now you resort to red baiting!
That’s typical of ex- trade union leader wannabes — red bait the rank & filers that want to stop all the class collaboration and liquidation of the union that winds up with a lousier & lousier contract.
It’s precisely that pattern of behavior by union bureaucrats that has reduced American unionism to its pathetically weakened state today.
When people are losing a debate their first resort is to change the subject.
The subject is not Marx & Mao but why somebody here would vote for Obama considering his abysmal record, particularly since the blog’s founder won’t be based on Constitutional principles he considers inviolate, that is, as Turley articulated in his LA Times article, Obama has decreed himself judge, jury & executioner of every person on the planet and such a notion does violence to the US Constitution & every civil liberty principle he holds dear.
As far as the name of the Iraqi woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize only to be murdered shortly thereafter by Clinton, it was 2 decades ago and my memory is sharp but not that sharp.
Surely the regulars who loathe my critique of Obama & the dems, many of who sit at the computer all day & night, will gladly prove my test question wrong if it were possible which it isn’t.
Thus I predict silence will be deafening except for those who will try & change the subject or otherwise attempt to stifle the messenger despite the facts of the message.
“I took you to school on Vaclav Havel less than a year ago and now you resort to red baiting!”
Karl,
You are a Marxist though aren’t you? since I believe you have every right to be one I’m certainly not “Red Baiting”. I am really pointing out useful information about you, to allow people perspective on where your views are coming from and what your agenda is. The same would be true if you were your direct opposite number on the Right, a tea bagger.
See having dealt with many I am well aware that from a Marxist perspective, a Romney victory and all the chaos it would cause to most of the people in this country, would be desirable for recruiting purposes. This was what I always found to be wrong with the Marxist perspective. While giving plaintive cries in defense of the oppressed, to Marxists that is an intellectual exercise, since they need people’s continued misery in order to achieve what they think they can achieve. Unlike you, people’s suffering to me is an emotionally gut wrenching feeling and I see my duty as trying to ameliorate it as much as I can.
“That’s typical of ex- trade union leader wannabes — red bait the rank & filers that want to stop all the class collaboration and liquidation of the union that winds up with a lousier & lousier contract.”
Actually, the people that defeated me in that election both had Communist Party people in their retinues and the person who won was CP himself. He proceeded to assist in destroying the democratic nature of the union. As I said before my biggest opponents were Trotskyites.
“Thus I predict silence will be deafening except for those who will try & change the subject or otherwise attempt to stifle the messenger despite the facts of the message.”
Is it stifling the messenger to point out what the messenger’s political perspective is and therefore what he is attempting to do, I think not? If that were true than I think your writing:
“It’s precisely that pattern of behavior by union bureaucrats that has reduced American unionism to its pathetically weakened state today.”
was an effort to stifle me? As for myself I was never a “union bureaucrat”, which was precisely why I wasn’t electable. What I must admit amuses me so much about you Karl is that your sentence structure, adjectives and writing are so typical of those I encountered more than 40 years ago. It proves to me what slavish devotion “party line’ people have. You are what is known as a
“Left Wing-Right Wing Authoritarian”.
http://jonathanturley.org/2012/01/21/the-authoritarians-a-book-review-and-book/
Mike and Gene,
Thanks for the excellent perspectives. Although, Mike, don’t you mean a, “[false] dialectic view which is really a tautology.”?
“Although, Mike, don’t you mean a, “[false] dialectic view which is really a tautology.”?”
gbk,
Not only are you witty and a wordsmith, but you’re also smart and correct.
Mike S. — and Gene H. might learn something too — you were taken to school on all the drivel you wrote about Vaclav Havel a few months ago — for which you proferred a public apolgy — and you’ve been taken to school on why Turley won’t be voting for Obama this November so whatever redbaiter nonsense you want to spew about my politics is diversionary irrelevance insofaras my politics happen to be closer to Turley’s on why we both won’t be voting for Obama come the end of this year.
Res ipsa loquitur
Karl,
The difference twixt you and me is I admit it when I’ m wrong and I have the courage to be honest about myself. Why aren’t you proud of your Marxist beliefs? You make assertions but give little support for them other than invective. As far as taking me to school on Havel let’s just say that the point wasn’t important enough to track down. You couldn’t take me to school in a real debate because you’re so rigidly doctrinaire and I have something you sorely lack: An open mind.
Mike,
Who can blame him for avoiding that subject? Admitting you’re a Marxist at this point in history is as embarrassing as explaining why you might have a perfectly preventable venereal disease.
Gene,
There is really nothing puzzling about Karl’s accusations of those here who would vote for Obama. Interestingly he never answered my rather long comment to him above in which I outed him as a Marxist. Marxists tactics are to attack liberals and progressives much more than right wingers. The idea is that is who their real opposition in the quest for power is. Marxist belief is that the masses will only revolt and follow their lead when there is chaos. Their problem is their doctrinaire rigidity born of adhering to a dialectic view which is really a tautology. They’re personally annoying and not fun to hang out with. Ultimately though the are similar to teabaggers, but at this point far less dangerous. Too many years of blind support for the USSR and Mao destroyed their credibility but I guess hope springs eternal.
Karl
I’m having trouble finding the Iraqi poet who won a Nobel to which you refer. Can you please supply a name?
BFMike:
More on your excellent point was the movie “Wag the Dog” inspired by Clinton’s unilateral, and as it tuns out criminal according to the World Court, bombing of a Sudanese Baby Formula factory that was conveniently targeted by Clinton in a blatant manipulation of CIA Intelligence right before some big congressional or senate vote. It was that very war crime that inspired Bush and the Neocons that they could manufacture any justification they desired to inflict illegal war & misery upon any brown people they desired without consequence.
Facts are stubborn things or as Turley says: (“The thing itself speaks”)