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The good people at the Latin American Coalition in Charlotte posted the following story on the organization’s blog today:

Rausel AristaRausel is a great guy and he needs your help

Rausel Arista– father to 2 young boys, a community leader, and an organizer here at the Latin American Coalition since 2012– was detained and put into deportation proceedings this morning at the Buffalo, NY airport on his way home to Charlotte. He is currently being held in a Buffalo area detention center, hundreds of miles away from home and his family.

Please take a few moments to help Rausel by taking one or more of the following actions: Read More

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Gay marriage 2There are two articles worth reading in Raleigh’s News & Observer this morning about Tuesday’s anti-gay speak-out by some conservative pastors.

Chris Sgro of Equality NC is on the editorial page with this excellent post in which he responds to a list of absurd claims. For example:

‘(Marriage equality) is not a trend of the people but a trend of the courts.’ – Dr. Mark Harris, former U.S. Senate candidate and Charlotte pastor

Actually, it’s both. Not only have there been 24 consecutive victories for the freedom to marry since June 2013, but support for marriage equality throughout the nation and North Carolina has never been higher. For example, at the time of Amendment One’s passage in May 2012, 53 percent of North Carolinians supported civil unions and marriage. That number had risen to 63 percent eight months later.

“Courts have put themselves above Almighty God.”

– the Rev. Mark Creech, executive director of the Christian Action League of North Carolina, Inc.

The judges who have ruled on the cases affecting marriage equality have been at every level – from federal to state courts. They are Republican-appointees, Democrat-appointees, liberal and conservative. Regardless of ideology or past ruling history, each of these judges has upheld that same-sex marriage should be legal. It is a constitutional, American, common-sense issue.

Many people of faith support same-sex marriage. There is no “lock” on what religious North Carolinians believe about same-sex marriage. That is why many faith leaders have joined the United Church of Christ and our friends at Campaign for Southern Equality in a suit to protect their religious right to conduct same-sex marriages.

Meanwhile, columnist Barry Saunders takes one of the most outspoken hate purveyors — the Rev. Patrick Wooden — to task in this essay entitled “Rev, let’s quit worrying about gay marriage and focus on real issues.”

To which all a body can say is “Amen.”

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Patrick WoodenIt comes from the notorious all-purpose far right minister, the Rev. Patrick Wooden of Raleigh’s Upper Room Church of God in Christ. At a pastor’s anti-marriage equality event today near the state Capitol Building, Wooden said the following according to this AP story:

Seventy-eight percent of our children are born into homes where there are no dads. We have a disaster going on. In fact, if we encourage marriage, we won’t need as many government handouts.

Thanks for that brilliant insight, Rev. Pat. I’ll be sure to explain that to my LGBT friends who’ve adopted all kinds of unwanted children from troubled single moms and given them a chance at happy lives.
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Paul Stam 2It’s funny how time usually seems to catch up to hate and bigotry (and the people who purvey them).  As society progresses and humans become more enlightened, language and viewpoints and images that once were widely held and expressed become less and less acceptable. Sometimes, the change happens rather suddenly — so suddenly that the proponents of the noxious views miss the memo and go right on spouting off until they suddenly become laughingstocks and pariahs for saying the same things they’ve been saying for years.

The current sports world controversy surrounding the use of the name “Redskins” by the Washington, DC NFL team is an example of how public mores can reach a tipping point and then change rapidly.

America witnessed countless such incidents in the late 20th Century around the issue of race and gender — usually in the form of clueless public figures saying embarrassingly stupid things about members of racial minorities or women. The pathetic thing about so many of these incidents. of course, was the befuddlement that gripped the clueless bigots. Frequently, they simply couldn’t fathom how their once-funny “jokes” or “common wisdom” observations had, all of a sudden, become offensive and unacceptable.

Let’s hope with all our hearts that we’re witnessing another such event take place right before our eyes in North Carolina with the latest noxious utterances from North Carolina’s longstanding champion of hatred and intolerance toward the LGBT community, State Rep. Paul Stam. Read More

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Gay marriage 3It’s been less than two years since North Carolina officially enshrined discrimination in its constitution by passing the execrable Amendment One. Now, less than 24 months later, just as Speaker Thom Tillis famously/infamously predicted, the law seems fast on its way to obsolescence and, ultimately, the dustbin of history.

Yesterday, lawyers with the ACLU of North Carolina asked a federal court to block enforcement of the law on behalf of three same-sex couples seeking recognition of their marriages – a result that developments in other states makes increasingly plausible.

Now, today, new polling shows that a sizable majority of North Carolinians opposes the substance of the discrimination amendment. According to one of the nation’s most accurate polling shops, Raleigh-based Public Policy Polling, not only do 40% of voters (62% of young voters) favor total marriage equality, but:

“There is increasingly little division among voters in the state about whether gay couples should at least have some sort of legal rights in the form of civil unions. 62% support either marriage or civil unions for same sex couples to only 34% who think they should have no legal recognition at all. 68% of both Democrats and independents support at least civil unions, and even Republicans narrowly do by a 50/48 spread.”

The discrimination amendment, of course, bars even civil unions for same-sex couples. All in all, it’s hard to see how the amendment survives the decade — and maybe even the year. Stay tuned.

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