A Whole Lotta Sex-Talk in Raleigh

Well, the “honorables” in the North Carolina House have voted overwhelmingly to put the issue of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on the May primary election ballot.

Of course, this development has sent the Chapel Hill-Carrboro crowd off the deep end.  They tried hard to derail this thing.  First, they started with the ol’ tried and true Hitler-and-the-Jews analogy, but that didn’t wash.

Then, they tried the economic development route:  Banning same-sex marriage will cost North Carolina jobs it so desperately needs.

(I can just picture that corporate boardroom conversation now:  “Okay, gentlemen, we need to make sure we build our new multi-million dollar plant in a state that will let Adam and Steve have the most festive wedding possible.”)  Never mind that several other states already have amendments like this on the books, and don’t appear to be suffering for it.

When the public didn’t appear to buy THAT one either, the spin turned to the gravity of amending the state constitution:  We already have a law banning same-sex marriage.  Why do we want to take the serious step of amending our highly-sacred state constitution? It is a very serious, and highly unnecessary step.

Pull up a chair, folks, and let me tell you why this amendment is necessary.  We have a lot of mushy, leftist creative types wearing black robes sitting on benches across this state.  They like to find imaginative justifications for overturning good laws.

Just recently, Superior Court Judge Howard Manning found a constitutional mandate for state-funded nursery school.  He went as far as ordering the legislature to adjust the state budget and put line items back in the document.  THAT kind of thing teeters on the edge of unconstitutionality.  What about the ol’ separation of powers thing?

If a constitutional amendment is approved, it will be much more difficult for one of these mushy leftist partisans on the bench to bring gay marriage to North Carolina.  It’s much easier to strike down legislation approved by the legislature than it is to strike down a voter-approved constitutional amendment.  Judges are supposed to use the constitution as their “Bible”  — (oops, a religious reference.)  The Left knows that, too.

Passing this legislation will have a lot of upside for the NCGOP for the 2012 campaign.  The vote on the amendment will fire up the Christian conservative segment of the population between now and May.  It will be tough for the Left to get out the vote in May to oppose the amendment.  There are no significant Democrat contests on the ballot.

The vote will also create divisions within the legislature’s Democrat caucus, much as the budget debate did.  Democrats representing socially conservative districts will be under a lot of pressure to support the amendment, and not follow their party bosses’ orders to campaign against it.  (Ten Democrats bucked their party to put this question to a vote by the public.)