Andrew Sullivan calls North Carolina’s anti-civil rights vote last night “the politics of spite” and writes the following:
Absorbing the blow from last night is hard. If a victory for marriage equality happens, straight couples can go about their lives and nothing will change. If a defeat occurs, gay couples must live in fear of retaining joint custody of children, access to hospital rooms, health insurance, and on and on. Our families and friends, our children and nieces and nephews, come to realize that their family members are beneath civil equality – and that their inferiority is written into their very constitution. Listening to Maggie Gallagher this week, you may be struck by how she sees herself as the victim. Let me kindly suggest that that is not exactly an expression of human empathy.
Remember how meretricious this assault on gay couples was. They are already banned by state law from marrying. Now their own state constitution bans them from any civil rights as couples whatsoever: no domestic partnerships, no civil unions, nothing. It’s an act of pure punishment of citizens who are gay, a deliberate psychological blow to their self-esteem, their sense of citizenship, their core equality as human beings.
My response: boycott North Carolina.
There are 30 states now with such an Amendment. I don’t think it’s possible to boycott them all. I understand the sentiment though.
No we can’t boycott them all, but North Carolina’s law goes way beyond what other states have done. And the Democratic Convention is in Charlotte.