This totally counts as too little too late, but Amendment One is a bad idea. I was going to say something about this earlier, but I got distracted. Also, I got complacent. Truth be told, I do live in a little bubble. There may have been more than one “support Amendment One” sign up in Asheville, but I only saw the one. There were so many people out saying that this was a bad idea. So many from across all sorts of political stripes. I just figured it was a goner.
Apparently not, and what we very well could be looking at is a May 9 where no domestic relationship has legal status except that of marriage between one man and one woman. (As someone – Susan Wilson, I think – pointed out, it seems strange that those who drafted the bill found it necessary to specify the number of men and women allowed in a legal marriage. Probably that sharia thing again.) There are all sorts of consequences that this may have for straight couples “living in sin” including making it much harder to enforce domestic violence statutes. There are older adults who also live in sin in order to preserve Social Security survivorship benefits which they depend on to make ends meet.
But I miss the point completely by making arguments about how this amendment is hurting straight people when it is clearly aimed at denying the same rights and protections straight people have to those who’s homosexuality is made in the image of God (just like everything else about them.) The baptismal covenant in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer calls all the baptised to uphold the dignity of every human being. Amendment One does not do this. It demeans and degrades people for no other reason than their being honest about how they were made. It hurts their wholly innocent children, whose care and well-being is a concern of the whole community. That these people are our friends and neighbors, our parents and children, our brothers and sisters will be no different tomorrow than it is tonight. We will, however, have to stop taking them and the protection of their rights for granted. Me included.