Democratic Gov. Beverly Perdue of North Carolina raised some eyebrows in the South when she not only lashed out at her own citizens for an anti-same-sex marriage ban but adding that the measure made the state “look like Mississippi.” People in Mississippi were understandably put out by the notion that they are now an interchangable synonym with “backward,” “prejudiced,” and “frighteningly homophobic.”
The marriage ban vote was not close in North Carolina — passing by an overwhelming 62-to-38 percentage points. Perdue proclaimed
“It’s wrong for North Carolina, clearly, clearly and simply . . . People around the country are watching us, and they’re really confused. To have been such a progressive, forward-thinking, economically driven state that invested in education and that stood up for the civil rights of people, including the civil rights marches back in the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s — folks are saying, ‘What in the world is going on in North Carolina?’ We look like Mississippi.”
That last comment did not go over well with Mississippians from both parties and frankly I thought was rather uncivil for a sister state. However, the defense from Ole Miss was almost as off-putting. It is notable that Mississippi Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves did not try to defend his state as committed to equal rights of any kind. Instead, he insisted that Mississippi is better for business because “[w]e are creating an environment which encourages the private sector to invest capital in Mississippi, and I would invite any North Carolina-based company wanting to move to a lower-taxed, less-regulated state to look at our business-friendly opportunities.” That sounds a lot like, we come for the lack of equal rights but stay for the lack of environmental protections and taxes. Notably, Mississippi has the lowest per capita income of any state as well as the lowest level of health care protection for its citizens. It has secured the top spot for most obese state, however. Yet, Reeves wants people to know that the state is also a leader in lacking environmental protections for its citizens.
I am not sure which is worse: the comparison by Perdue or the defense by Reeves.
Source: New Observer
I live in North Carolina. The are some people around here in one particular suburb who use the N word. They are all transients from New York or New Jersey. They talk funny too. Tirdy turd and a turd. My pal is a blind guy with African roots and I stand up for him. So when the New York bigots talk too loud, me and my buds from the dog pack poop in their trashy New York style yards.
ARB,
Why do you think MS is such a poor state. It is not due to the lack of oil, no, the lack of sense. Ask any white trash food stamper who the President is. He’ll say, “it’s Reagan, isn’t it. It’s been so long since I voted last.
Now a handicap is nothing to laugh at, particularly one this serious. So stop cackling.
And when you say MS is a nice place to visit, then I wonder where you live. Should I guess and say something not known by most: the thunderstorm capital of the USA. Crack that nut, those who can.
But where you live must be like Winnemucca, any place is up from there.
You’re really a progressive man, that’s reactionary spelled backwards.
Actually your cousin told me you were a sweet guy. On her, she said. When’s the marriage? I’d like to send a bouquet. Of white lilies. Will that do?
idealist707, thanks for showing us all what a bigot is all about. I also did not know you had been appointed commisar of progressive thought, at least you should know how to spell better if you think progressive is reactionary spelled backwards. So it seems your ignorance is a match for those you decry in MS.
I love the MS Gulf Coast and I have visited the Vicksburg battlefield which I found very interesting. You also should check with a black man such as Morgan Freeman who loves MS and lives there. I guess it is not as bad for blacks as you would think. By the way, I love the fact that the state capital airport is now named after one of my heroes, Medgar Evers, the murdered head of the NAACP in MS. So I suggest you become a little less ignorant and bigoted, since MS has enough of that to go around.
AR Erb, Gays have the right to pursue happiness. If that means they want to be able to marry the person they love, wtf difference does it make to YOU? It does not affect straight people in ANY way.
When you deny this basic human activity to a minority group, all you do is cause unhappiness. Marriage has protections under the law that gays should be able to enjoy like everyone else.
I agree that the state should not regulate private sexual matters unless it has a compelling state interest. Thus we got rid of law against co-habitation and fornication, or they are not enforced. I had a white friend of mine in Hartford, CT who was arrested for fornication because he was living with a black woman to whom he was not legally married. Likewise we have not made adultery a criminal offense as it once was, Homosexuals acts have been decriminalized properly.
In fact one can have a harem as long as one does not ask the state for a license to marry more than one of the women. Once you ask the state for something, it ceases to be a private matter and becomes a public matter. Gays can live together, have sex together, have an orgy as much as they please and it makes no difference to me or the state.
Thus once you wish to involve the state, THEN I and we all have a say in it.
Poor Mississippians are going to be even worse off once Cochran leaves office. His position on Appropriations has brought a whole lot of earmarks their way.
Mississippi is one of the three states where the 20-year (1990-2009) transfer exceeded 200% of their annual GDP (more in federal spending than they pay in federal taxes). The figures are taken from calculations based on tax figures provided by the Internal Revenue Service and federal spending numbers provided by the Census Bureau.
I’ve been warned many times to stay out of Mississippi if the car I’m driving has a northern state license plate. One of Tex’s friends visits family there and rents a car in Tennessee before crossing over the border into Mississippi. He claims it gives him piece of mind and works out cheaper in the long run in that he doesn’t have to pay bogus tickets.
Gov. Perdue is right … no state wants to “look like Mississippi.”
Dear Friends,
As a Carolinian, North, there is no other worth mentioning, let me inform you that Beverly Perdue has been righting her Republican legislature sincethe voters went right wing crazy.
Of course, one of Kochs best men, a descendant of a major figure in black Raleigh since ages, is a very prominent political boss figure. He fought the good fight to keep
the Republicans in the Wake school board recently, so “neighborhood schools” would get permanentized.
In the meanwhile, we have a commission which examines jury verdicts on the basis of statistically based suspicion of prejudice. Do any others have that`
A valley of humility between two mountains of conceit, our modest motto. Tennessee we don’t mention in polite society.
AY,
And all of them have married cousins. First ones. And a little incest when we get the time over.
Food stamps? Of course, but you don’t think I change ’em in at the same store as the blacks, do you?
ARErb, “Just because I don’t think that we get anything out of gay marriage, hardly means I hate gays. That is like a child complaining that if it doesn’t get what it wants, you hate the child. Grow up!”
So, because gay marriage does not BENEFIT you (we? does that mean society) then it should not be encouraged?
Gay people will disagree with that, obviously. They get a lot out of marriage or they would not be lobbying so hard for marriage. And I think society benefits from gay marriage, think of all the small businesses it will support, all the children who will be adopted, and all the great parties one can go to.
Seriously, giving basic civil rights to gay people should not be an issue in America in the 21st Century. Some people are just stuck on 1950 when white hetero men reigned supreme.
Marriage is a legal contract granted by the state for ITS benefit and reasons as well as the couple. Gay marriage is NOT a right and to stretch the Loving decision to encompass that is beyond absurd since homosexual acts were criminal back then and such laws were upheld by the same SCOTUS.
The state has every right to grant subsidies to businesses that it finds serve a public purpose. Denying such a contract or subsidy does NOT mean that others are denied their “rights”. In fact in my area of work, the airlines get government subsidies in the form of mail contracts. They were actually brought into existence by outright standards to make them profitable. At one time the early airlines employed people to mail the Sears catalogues via air mail to places because the government paid them by the pound for mail carried. The cost of airmail stamps were so low that it did not come close to meeting the cost that the airlines charged the post office.
Adopting children, starting a business, and all the other things you mentioned is NOT dependent on gay marriage. They do that all the time. It is not discrimination to not grant a marriage license for same sex marriage since there is NO gayness test to get a license. Gays can and DO marry others of the opposite sex, and the marriage laws apply evenly to all. Just because you want to change the legal definition of marriage does NOT mean they have no rights or are discriminated against. The proper place for gay marriage is in the state legislature to make such changes in accordance with the will of the people.
If gay marriage is a right, then why did we ever need the 19th Amendment? Voting is a far more fundamental right and it is explicitly mentioned in our Constitution too. If the 14th is controlling for our rights, then why were the amendments needed to give women the right to vote or 18 year olds?
I applaud Governor Perdue for her political courage. I also must say that I would never voluntarily go to Mississippi for any purpose, it scares me and yes I admit that is prejudice on my part.
To MS. I go there a lot and it is a nice place to visit and Morgan Freeman thinks it is a nice place to live. At least MS has a good excuse for having so few state services since it IS a poor state. Texas has NO such excuse since it is FAR richer than most states in the US.
“frighteningly homophobic.”
I’m stealing this. By far the best way I’ve heard described the bigoted attitudes of those who wish to discriminate against gays.
“I am not sure which is worse: the comparison by Perdue or the defense by Reeves.”
Seems to me that the defense by Reeves confirms the comparison by Perdue.
Actually Texas has surpassed MS in most public welfare and status categories so we used to say thank God of MS too. Now folks can say thank God for Texas since we lead the nation in the most uninsured for health care and other such categories.
I hardly think that being against gay marriage is an indication of bigotry or lack of progressive outlooks. I am opposed to gay marriage, but I am not for criminalizing homosexual acts nor treating gays differently in most things. Just because I don’t think that we get anything out of gay marriage, hardly means I hate gays. That is like a child complaining that if it doesn’t get what it wants, you hate the child. Grow up! I guess too that we are hating Mormons and Muslims if we don’t let them have more than one wife.
When I was growing up in South Carolina in the late 1940s and 1950s, our state ranked next to last in various categories, including education. We used to say “Thank God for Mississippi.”
A bit of correction. Ole Miss is the nickname of the University of Mississippi. I have never heard of the entire state referred to as “Ole Miss.” Mississippi State is also a university in Mississippi.
I don’t know what the folks in Mississippi are upset about. It’s not like they’re not the most obviously backward thinking, anti-progress, red neck embarrassment this country has. They’re proud it. When state governments work as hard as they do in North Carolina or Arizona to restrict people’s rights based solely on archaic superstitions, they deserve to be called out for propagating and imitating the worst of America. Mississippi is what all of America would function like if Republicans had their way.
Well you know you’re from Mississippi when your husband, wife, brother, sister, son and nephew are riding in the same corvair……..
“frankly I thought was rather uncivil for a sister state”. Oh, c’mon, it was only “uncivil” because it was said out loud, in public, by someone who gets attention. It is what get’s said all the time among the more “enlightened”. On the hypocrisy/civility scale (I know, its a non sequitur), I’d say the gov gets many more props than barbs for setting out in a few words the disconnect between being supposedly economically progressive, and being socially reactionary.
What Frankly said. The truth hurts sometimes.
“It’s wrong for North Carolina, clearly, clearly and simply . . . People around the country are watching us, and they’re really confused. To have been such a progressive, forward-thinking, economically driven state that invested in education and that stood up for the civil rights of people, including the civil rights marches back in the ‘50s and ‘60s and ‘70s — folks are saying, ‘What in the world is going on in North Carolina?’ We look like Mississippi.”
Follow the money around the evangelical right, the fundamentalists who are politically active, and you just might find the fountain, the source.
This reminds me a lot of comments made in Minnesota about the Dakotas. Yes they are backwards, yes they get more money FROM the Federal government than they pay in while Minnesota pays more than it gets back, yes they lack many of the services you might expect from a modern state – but woe betide the pol who brings that up!
They will use their Federal largess to pimp their crappy public services, poor worker protections and blind eye regulation to try and poach companies away from the civilized world. They don’t realize that they can be easily one-upped by any 3rd world country in this race to the bottom.