Editorial: Leave it alone

Sometimes the abject lunacy of a public debate or decision speaks for itself, and needs only a faint highlight for people to see it as such. Other times, such as in most discussion involving same-sex marriage, the finer points need to be specifically articulated and ridiculed for being bigoted and discriminatory.

On Monday, a Pitt County commissioner sought to have the board pass a resolution supporting attempts to amend the state Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. I think this is jaw-dropping on many levels, and sought to explain my reasoning in today’s editorial.

In the summer, we often have a sharp drop off in the number of letters to the editor we receive as families take vacations or tune out from local news. For instance, I was surprised on Wednesday to only have one letter about the drive-by shooting from earlier this week. While I never write an editorial only to provoke a response, I expect a fairly contentious one in response to this one.

Editorial: Leave it alone – Commissioners should avoid marriage debate

Pitt County Commissioner David Hammond should know better. Only 42 years after North Carolina’s law prohibiting interracial marriage was declared unconstitutional, he proposes a resolution supporting an amendment to the state constitution that would effectively ban same-sex unions.

Committed monogamous relationships should be celebrated by North Carolina, not condemned as this amendment would do. Hammond and the rest of the Board of Commissioners would be better served by focusing on county issues rather than trying to incorporate discrimination into state law.

At Monday’s county commission meeting, Hammond proposed a resolution for consideration that would support efforts to amend the state’s constitution to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. It would respond to a growing number of states that have allowed civil unions, extending legal and financial rights to same-sex partnerships.

Thirty states have approved similar amendments, and North Carolina is the only state in the Southeast that has not. Supporters, mostly Republicans, argue that Democratic leadership in the General Assembly should allow for a floor debate and have tried to use it as a wedge issue in recent election cycles. This, despite an Elon University poll in March that found a majority of state voters oppose amending the constitution in this way.

Hammond offered the resolution so that Pitt County could signal its support of the amendment to lawmakers, but the board took no action. Commissioner Jimmy Garris expressed his disappointment that such an amendment would even be needed, demonstrating his opposition to civil unions. Commissioner Eugene James served as the voice of reason, pointing out that the matter was a state issue not a county one.

James is right, and the county has no business in this arena. But neither should North Carolina move to codify the type of discrimination it once showed toward interracial marriage. North Carolina’s anti-miscegenation ban dates to 1715 and was only ended by the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia in 1967. How many state residents were denied the prospect of happiness during that time of state-sanctioned bigotry?

That question should be asked now. Some frame the issue as a moral one, saying that marriage should be only as the Bible dictates, between one man and one woman. A religious definition may be fine for a church, which is welcome to decline sanctifying same-sex unions. But the state should recognize the justice in allowing its residents to pick partners of their choosing and ratify their mutual contract, investing in that couple the rights and protections of a marriage.