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State Rep. Paul Stam

If you had any hopes that this year’s version of the North Carolina General Assembly would be less reactionary than the last two, these should have been quickly dashed in recent days by the announcement that the 2015 session will commence its substantive work next Wednesday with a “briefing” on a bill to sanction and promote discrimination against the state’s LGBT population.

The proposal comes, of course, from that irrepressible foe of tolerance and modernity, Rep. Paul Stam of Wake County — a man who has devoted the lion’s share of his years in elected office to advancing a narrow and backward-looking social agenda. Under this latest proposal, Stam would attempt to allow registers of deeds and magistrates to opt out of serving LGBT citizens seeking marriage licenses if doing so “would violate their core religious beliefs.” No word yet on whether Stam would allow similar treatment of officials with “religious” objections to interracial marriage.

Happily, there is a deep and growing wellspring of opposition to Stam’s sham. Chris Sgro of Equality NC does a fine job of explaining this opposition on the editorial page of this morning’s edition of Raleigh’s News & Observer. Here is an excerpt: Read More

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Gay marriage 3Regular NC Policy Watch contributor Charles Beem weighs in this morning with is thoughts on the painfully slow process of finalizing America’s embrace of marriage equality.

The waiting game: Marriage equality and the Supreme Court
By Dr. Charles Beem

It has been nearly three months since the triumph of marriage equality in North Carolina, and it appears that the institution of heterosexual marriage has survived intact. For the LGBT community in North Carolina, it is the one bright spot in an otherwise dismal couple of years, which has seen this state slide from purple to red and all the attendant regression in health care, education, and civil rights that has accompanied the slide to the right.

Most notorious, of course, was the passage of Amendment One, a sucker punch thrown at the electorate in a May 2012 primary election in which a whopping 34% of registered voters participated, which, from hindsight, was sort of like a state passing a law prohibiting interracial marriage on the eve of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Loving v. Virginia (1967). After a federal appeals court declared the amendment unconstitutional last October, we witnessed the spectacle of conservative legislative leaders spending your tax dollars to try to defend the amendment, which reminds me of the soldiers who fanatically defended Hitler’s bunker from the Russians after he was dead!

Yet despite the momentous gains made for marriage equality in 2014, there is still cause to worry. Quite unlike the Warren Court that ruled unanimously in Loving in 1967, the current U.S. Supreme Court is quite obviously divided on an issue that a majority of Americans are coming to believe is a natural and logical, if not inevitable, progression of civil rights. Read More

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When my family first started attending Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh several years ago, there was a little boy who was about the same age as our youngest daughter. His name was Max and he had a younger sister named Erin. The kids stood out a little because both Max and Erin were African-American and their two dads, Nathan and Dave, were white. I learned at the time from a close friend who knew the family well that the two kids had been adopted out of extremely rough, impoverished circumstances. The term “crack baby” was used.

By all appearances, though, the kids seemed pretty doggone normal and the parents were clearly loving and attentive. I have a vivid memory of one of the dads holding a wriggling Erin, dressed in her finest holiday dress, as Max portrayed one of the animals in the children’s Christmas play.

As the years went on and Max and his family moved away, I heard occasionally through my friend that they were doing well (Max had actually been admitted to West Point!) and took it as a remarkable testament to the power of love to overcome some of the worst things that society has to dish out — namely the grinding poverty from which the kids were rescued and the absurd and hateful discrimination that I knew the family still found itself subjected to regularly.

And then last night, my Pullen friend passed along this amazing story from writer S.L. Price of Sports Illustrated that fills in a lot of the details I had missed in recent years. Unless you are one of the shrinking number of troubled souls still clinging to a closed heart and mind on the question of LGBT equality, I promise you will be unable to read it or watch the accompanying video without feeling a lump in your throat. Indeed, it may happen even if you are — I sure hope so.

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Gay marriage 2So, if the “religious beliefs” of a public official (like, for instance, a register of deeds) cause him or her one to oppose interracial marriage or, say, marriage between heterosexuals who are incapable of procreation, should that public official have the right to decline to issue marriage licenses to such couples?

According to the ironically-named North Carolina Values Coalition, the answer to that question is, by all appearances, “yes.” How else to explain the group’s efforts late last week to “inform” public officials throughout the state that they are free to decline to issue licenses to same-sex couples if to do so would violate “their conscience”?

Happily, the good people at Equality NC are speaking up to refute this nonsensical propaganda. This is from a release the group distributed late last Friday: Read More

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New from the N.C. State Health Plan website’s “newsroom”:

Eligibility Update Regarding Friday’s Ruling on Same Sex Marriages

A federal court has overturned North Carolina’s law regarding same gender marriage, recognizing same sex marriages as legal in North Carolina. This ruling now makes same sex spouses of State Health Plan members eligible for State Health Plan coverage.

This ruling is considered a qualifying life event and eligible spouses will have 30 days to add their spouse. A marriage certificate will be necessary to verify the spouse is an eligible member. The effective date of coverage will be November 1, 2014.

Beyond this initial 30 days, marriage is a qualifying life event and members will have 30 days to add a spouse to their health plan coverage.

Please see your Health Benefits Representative for assistance in enrolling an eligible spouse.

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