Voters in North Carolina on Tuesday
approved Amendment One, the constitutional amendment which bans gay
marriage in the state.
According to the Associated Press,
early reports showed the measure easily passing with 60 percent of
the vote.
The law states that “marriage between
one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be
valid or recognized in this State,” ruling out civil unions and
possibly domestic partnerships for gay and lesbian couples.
North Carolina had previously been the
only Southern state without a constitutional amendment banning gay
marriage. The state becomes the 30th to approve such a
law.
Evan Wolfson, founder and president of
Freedom to Marry, described the amendment as a “last gasp of
discrimination.”
“As momentum for the freedom to marry
continues to grow in the rest of the nation, today's vote is a
painful reminder of what happens when a preemptive ballot-measure is
stampeded through before people have had enough time to take in real
conversations about who gay families are and why marriage matters to
them,” Wolfson said in a statement. “This amendment is a last
gasp of discrimination that will cause real harm to families,
communities, and businesses in North Carolina, but says little about
the prospects for a better outcome in battles to come in states where
there has been greater visibility for loving and committed couples
and those who get to know them. And even in North Carolina, the
long-term effect of this nasty attack will be to spur more
conversations and open more hearts, helping more people rise to
fairness and support for the freedom to marry.”