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Posted by : Tuesday, July 9, 2013 1 Comment In Uncategorized

In a statement released this morning,  the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) announced that they would challenge the state’s ban on same sex marriage by amending a federal lawsuit pending here concerning a ban on second parent adoptions.

The move comes on the same day as similar challenges were announced in Pennsylvania and Virginia and just weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court decision in  United States v. Windsor, in which the court found that the federal Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as between one man and one woman was unconstitutional.

As stated in the announcement :

The ACLU is asking North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to agree to allow an additional claim challenging the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples to be added to Fisher-Borne v. Smith, a lawsuit filed last year in Greensboro in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina that challenges the state’s ban on second parent adoption, a process by which one partner in an unmarried gay or straight couple adopts the other partner’s biological or adoptive child. If the Attorney General’s office does not agree to the addition of the new claim, the ACLU will petition the court to allow the claim to be added.

Posted by : Friday, June 8, 2012 6 Comments In Uncategorized

(This story was written by our friend Greg Flynn and initially posted at Blue NC)

International Christian relief and evangelism charity organization Samaritan’s Purse run by Franklin Graham contributed $150,200 towards newspaper and TV advertising in support of the NC Marriage Amendment, according to an Independent Expenditure report filed with the NC State Board of Elections.

A total of $272,593.70 was reported spent by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association on full page ads in NC newspapers featuring the image of Billy Graham and words attributed to him and, on TV ads with similar content all with the legend “Paid for by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association”. $190,200 was reported as contributions from other persons or entities leaving $82,393.70 as the assumed direct contribution of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Of the $190,200 contributed by others $150,200 came from Samaritan’s Purse based in Boone, NC. $20,000 came from Mark DeMoss of Duluth, GA, and another $20,000 came from Dick Furman of Boone, NC. Mark DeMoss is an evangelical who runs a Christian PR agency and serves as an advisor to Mitt Romney. Dick Furman is a doctor who founded World Medical Mission which is part of the Samaritan’s Purse organization, on whose board he sits.

In soliciting donations on its website Samaritan’s Purse states: Read More

Posted by : Monday, May 21, 2012 3 Comments In Uncategorized

I’m sad to report that that the haters and crackpots masquerading as “people of God” continue to emerge from the woodwork in North Carolina. The following (including the video below) comes from our friends at Think Progress: 

North Carolina Pastor Charles Worley shared with his congregation this weekend how he thinks the country should deal with the scourge of gay men and lesbians: Lock them into a pen with an electrified fence, drop food down to them, and because they can’t reproduce, they will die out. Read More

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Posted by : Monday, May 14, 2012 11 Comments

Governor Perdue may have ruffled some feathers in the Magnolia State with her comments last Friday about Amendment One and Mississippi, but her remarks were on the money. As I noted in this interview with ABC 11. the sentiment she expressed makes perfect sense.

Think about it; If one of your main jobs was selling North Carolina to businesspeople from all over the nation and the world, you too would feel embarrassed by having to explain such nonsense. Imagine yourself in a meeting with Tim Cook, the head of Apple Computers and a gay man or, perhaps some prominent film industry exec: How the heck to you put a smiling face on such a hateful and backward-looking change?

Of course,  one could simply defer to the wisdom of the amendment’s chief sponsor, House Majority Leader Paul Stam. He said that passage of the amendment “is only backwards if you think that forward is a good thing”

Uncategorized
Posted by : Wednesday, May 9, 2012

It’s not terribly surprising that there have been a lot of excellent political cartoons drawn about Amendment One. Few things lend themselves better to a good skewering than pompous, mean-spirited bigotry. Kevin Siers at the Charlotte Observer has had a lot of good ones of late.  

Still, here at NC Policy Watch, we’re partial to the fantatsic work of our own John Cole. And, happily, a lot of smart folks agree. John is actually the President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists. 

Yesterday, the gifted cartoonist for MSNBC, Daryl Cagle, featured John’s Amendment One work for Policy Watch (and a brief interview with him) on his blog, The Cagle Post. You can check out the article by clicking here.

Way to go, John!

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