By Nancy Milio
“We couldn’t live under the constant threat,†was how she started her story.
I hadn’t met them before, this couple, lifelong North Carolinians. They’d met in high school, decided to marry within their faith community and moved to Durham more than a dozen years ago. In a way, their story sounds so, well, almost dull, so ordinary. They have two birth-children whom they dearly love. Mother Elise chose to leave her teaching job to be a stay-at-home mom while the children are young; her spouse happily shares their child-rearing responsibilities after work at a large company.
Why would North Carolina want to lose a family like this, who are building a secure and loving home for their children, preparing for their education and future? As responsible parents, they’ve spent thousands in legal fees to ensure protection of the little ones and each other, through wills, powers of attorney and medical documents.
Yet, they say, they could have to leave their home, job, families and friends, those irreplaceable life-long ties so necessary to raising a young family.
They face a threat because their names are Elise and Susan. The threat is the ban on all forms of legal adult partnership outside of a man-woman marriage mandated in the proposed Amendment One, to be voted on May 8, an amendment that would build discrimination into the North Carolina Constitution and imperil stable families.
To Elise and Susan, it could mean that should anything happen to Elise, her children would be in jeopardy, because it is currently not legal for Susan to adopt them. The couple could lose their employer family health insurance. They might be denied their rights to hospital visitation; their mutual medical decision-making wishes might no longer be respected. Their wills could be invalidated by the courts.
Thousands of settled households, families that contribute to their communities and the economic wealth of this state, will face similar threats if this amendment passes. Like Elise and Susan, they too may feel compelled to find a more accepting state.
The effects of the ban would be felt not only by gay and lesbian couples but by all unmarried partners, gay or straight. These partners would have their legal protections jeopardized, including domestic-violence constraints, and would face the loss of financial, medical and other legally documented choices. Older unmarried couples, should their now-legal civil union or domestic partnership be called into question, could suddenly have their health insurance and social security at risk.
Legal arguments alone will not defeat the unfairness of Amendment One in the May 8 primary. It must be done by North Carolinians who want to continue our long-held commitment to family values, the education and care of our children and reverence for family life. They will defeat this misguided attempt to insert discrimination into the guarantees of freedom and protection in our constitution.
Nancy Milio is a professor emeritus in the UNC School of Nursing.