Elizabeth Eve and the Rev. Kathryn
Cartledge, an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, on
Friday were arrested protesting North Carolina's gay marriage ban,
the AP reported.
The WE DO Campaign by the gay rights
group Campaign
for Southern Equality includes 20 gay and lesbian couples
requesting marriage licenses at the Buncombe County Register of Deeds
Office in Asheville – considered one of North Carolina's most
progressive cities.
(Related: North
Carolina State Senator James Forrester calls Asheville a “cesspool.”)
On Friday, Eve and Cartledge refused to
leave the county office building after a clerk had denied them a
marriage license. The women were carted away in handcuffs and
charged with second-degree trespassing. They were released later in
the day.
“I feel so hopeful,” Cartledge
said. “I feel so much hope for the future. Maybe it's the wind
blowing outside, but I know that in my lifetime, before I die, I'll
marry Elizabeth Eve.”
The women said they met at a homeless
soup kitchen in Atlanta, Georgia and have been a couple for 30 years.
They share two daughters, Mary Hart and Bess, and four
grandchildren.
The campaign unfolds as voters in May
will decide on a far-reaching amendment that would make it
unconstitutional for North Carolina to recognize gay and lesbian
couples with marriage, civil unions and possibly even domestic
partnerships. (A video from the campaign is embedded in the right
panel of this page.)