North Carolina House Majority Leader
Paul “Skip” Stam on Wednesday reiterated his claim that a
proposed gay marriage ban would protect children.
The 61-year-old Stam made his remarks
during a town hall meeting on the amendment at the University of
North Carolina law school in Chapel Hill. Representing opponents of
the amendment was Minority Whip Rick Glazier, a Democrat from
Cumberland.
Last Tuesday, the North Carolina Senate
approved a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage in
the state and sent it to voters for their approval in May. The
House approved the measure the day before. The legislation moved
from House committee to final approval in the Senate in roughly 26
hours. All together, lawmakers spent less than six hours debating
the issue and blocked the public from debating on the divisive
legislation.
If approved, the measure would ban
North Carolina from recognizing the unions of gay and lesbian couples
with marriage, civil unions and possibly domestic partnerships.
Stam told law students that the state
became involved in marriage to support children.
“It wasn't about love or romance. It
was about children. So that, for example, in medieval Europe as
people would go around and have secret marriages nobody really knew
whose child was the child of whom. Who was otherwise married and for
me to marry that person would then be bigamy, but they maybe didn't
tell me about it – there was no licensure, so how would you know?
But it's been maintained not because of love or romance, but for the
welfare of children.” (The video is embedded in the right panel of
this page.)
Earlier, Stam
said the amendment would protect children because “all social
science research demonstrates [an opposite-sex household is] the best
way for children to be raised.”
Glazier said the state constitution
“was not designed as a tool to divide citizens of this state one
from another.”
“The constitution holds equality as
an ideal, and the divisiveness and irrationality and fear at the
heart of this amendment cannot be tolerated,” he added.
(Related: North
Carolina Senator James Forrester tells lesbian mom to move to New
York.)