Prop 8 supporter opposes NC Amendment One

This is big news. David Blankenhorn was one of the two witnesses to testify in favor of Prop8 in the 9th district federal case. Even he finds the amendment in North Carolina to be over the top, as he comes out against it in this new Op/Ed.

For one thing, it means that North Carolina could not, now or ever, take any step or devise any policy to extend legal recognition and protection to same-sex couples. No domestic partnership laws. No civil unions. Nothing.

That’s mighty cold. If you disdain gay and lesbian persons, and don’t care whether they and their families remain permanently outside of the protection of our laws, such a policy might be your cup of tea. But it’s not our view, and we doubt that it’s the view of most North Carolinians.

Indeed, it's just bad politics. My emphasis....

If you want to create a backlash against mother-father marriage – if you want to convince people that the real agenda of marriage advocates is not protecting marriage, but ignoring and ostracizing gay people – then this amendment might be to your liking. But we believe that the cause of marriage is hurt, not helped, by gratuitously linking it to the cause of never under any circumstances helping gay and lesbian couples.

A voice of reason? or purely pragmatic?

If you wonder why the push for gay marriage is so rapidly gaining ground across our nation, especially among young people, we don’t think you need to look much further than this tragic social dynamic, in which support for mother-father marriage appears to many to have merged with either overt antagonism or cold indifference regarding the actual lives and needs of gay and lesbian couples and their children.

From now on, when we stand up for marriage, let’s make sure that it’s marriage that we’re standing up for. In 2012, perhaps we marriage advocates can begin to prove – perhaps you in North Carolina can be national leaders in proving – that supporting marriage need not carry with it the requirement of bigotry against gay and lesbian persons.

Meanwhile, NOM and their supporters continue to prove the opposite, calling faithful lesbian and gay couples pedophiles, and worse, as they cynically try to fan racial conflicts and provoke violence. The reason so many of these groups are called hate groups is NOT because they disagree about marriage equality. It's because they distort the facts and tell blatant, demonizing lies about LGBT people.

In North Carolina, people will have the option to vote "NO" on hatred and divisiveness. Same sex marriage is already illegal in NC. There is no need for this amendment, except for a bare desire to hurt an unpopular group.