By Kirk Ross
Deep into the night of Election Day 2010 I was right about where you’d expect any crusty newspaper editor to be — sitting mid-bar downtown watching ice melt in a short glass and talking politics with no one in particular.
Right about then, in a scene that could have been written by Ben Hect, a young man who’d been pouring his heart and soul into a local legislative race sat down beside me and started to bemoan what he succinctly described as “the slaughter.â€
His candidate had won. In this super blue part of the Triangle, you wouldn’t bet otherwise. But he was down, way down. The U.S. House and the North Carolina House and Senate had gone to the GOP. Big stuff. Big changes.
The last time the GOP held both chambers of the N.C. General Assembly was during the late 1800s when a coalition of blacks and white progressives ran the state. The era came to an end in 1898, the year of the Wilmington riots. The election of 2010 was no coup, of course, but for a lot of people still riding high from 2008, it sure did sting.
There was good indication throughout the fall that a lot of districts could swing, but few understood the true scope of the swing until the final tallies came in. The Senate would be able to override just about any veto, while in the House, Democrats would have to show enormous cohesion to sustain one.
Talking over the consequences that evening, my friend the savvy young campaign worker and I had no problem coming up with a short list of where the ripples from the election would be felt — redistricting, budget cuts, the death penalty, environmental policy, immigration and so on.
When it came to social policy, neither of us dreamed we’d see a national argument over contraception coverage and whether it is sound public policy to support women’s health programs.
But it was clear from that night forward that one major issue would turn into a full-blown fight. For more than a decade, social conservatives in the General Assembly have introduced legislation calling for a constitutional amendment to prevent gay marriage. And for just as long, Democratic leaders, mainly in the House, kept the bills, which would not be subject to a governor’s veto, from getting anywhere close to the floor. No vote, no amendment.
That dynamic came to an end when the new majority was sworn in. During its first try, the General Assembly failed to pass the amendment referendum, but GOP leaders, determined to make good on promises to get it on the ballot, brought it up again during a special session last September. Now we get to march over the same hot coals as they have in other states.
Marriage amendments are not just an expression of the social conservative agenda, they’re a useful tool in ginning up the base and have been used in critical election cycles, most notably Ohio in 2004. I’m not sure which group is harder to forgive — the people who have a deeply held belief that people who have a different sexual orientation should be denied civil rights or people who would manipulate those believers to win an election or solicit campaign cash.
If the idea that we’re voting on this at all infuriates you, take heart. A recent Elon University Poll and a Public Policy Polling survey done earlier this year indicate the idea of amending our state’s constitution to put limits on marriage (and domestic partnerships and who knows what else) isn’t the slam-dunk its supporters thought it would be.
The votes are there to defeat it; the polls show that. And with enough fight and organization, this state — the one with the motto that translates as “To be, rather than to seem†— can bring down the curtain on a shameful era of subterfuge in American politics.