The Path Forward :: Scrutiny Hooligans

Today your NC Senate will decide whether to send a referendum enshrining bigotry into our Constitution to a May ballot. Yesterday your NC House voted in favor of doing so. Reps. Fisher and Keever were against it, and Rep. Tim Moffitt was with the majority.

These are the remarks I gave last night to hundreds of people who gathered in Pack Square to hold vigil on this process and to offer support to one another. These are a couple of dark days in North Carolina, when representatives choose to offer up the rights of their consituents to a popular vote.

Thank you all for coming together tonight to stand up for the principles upon which our nation was founded.

On the eve of historic steps in Raleigh that seek to dismiss and condemn the committed relationships of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered North Carolinians, we stand with a united voice for equality.

We stand in opposition to any referendum that will restrict the freedom to pursue happiness.

We stand in opposition to attempts on the part of our elected leaders to dismiss and disrespect the relationships of their constituents.

We stand together ? straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered ? married and single ? Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, Atheists ? We say with one voice that making bigotry the law of North Carolina is wrong.

On so many levels, we have been moving closer to recognition of equal rights for all our citizens.

Asheville is moving to protect the rights of all our citizens by implementing Same Sex Domestic Partner Benefits, a domestic partner registry, a strengthened non-discrimination policy, an Anti-bullying law.

Here in Asheville, CarePartners, one of Buncombe County?s biggest employers has begun offering SSDPB. Over half of the Fortune 500 offer these benefits as well.

The anti-gay, marriage amendment threatens all of these advances.

The North Carolina chapter of the NAACP has come out against the referendum, saying to our legislators, ?We strongly urge you to reject the so-called same sex amendment and any other present or future proposals of constitutional amendments that would permanently deprive any person in our great state of his or her inalienable rights.?

Thanks to President Obama?s Executive Order, hospitals across the nation will recognize the visitation rights of same-sex couples. Don?t Ask, Don?t Tell has been sent to the scrap heap of history.

In New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, and New Hampshire marriage is respected in all its forms.

Those legislators promoting a referendum on discrimination are fighting against a turning tide.

They are ignoring the direction of history, and they are doing it with the full understanding of what it means for the safety and welfare of the people they are elected to protect and serve.

When a privileged majority votes on the rights of an oppressed minority ? the results will always favor the oppressors.

Further ? It is never the job of government to prefer one sectarian religious belief over another.

That being said ? the path forward is broad and clear. It is peace, freedom, respect, and love.

It is in forgiving Senator Forrester when he calls Asheville a cesspool of sin that we rise above and drive home our overarching message of peace, freedom, respect, and love.

We will keep loving you, Senator Forrester. We will keep loving anyone who stands against equality.

We will fight every day armed with an eternal truth put forth in our nation?s founding document, that all people are created equal. We will fight armed with this truth and with the love that drives us all to be here tonight. We will fight to make America the beacon of freedom for all.

Let us send a message to all of North Carolina tonight. We will march forward with the knowledge that we are armed with truth, driven by justice, and our destination is freedom. Let those legislators hear you ? call them, visit them, email them, write letters to the editors of every newspaper from Murphy to Manteo.

And tonight let them hear your voices. Let them hear you say:

(Call and response)

PEACE

FREEDOM

RESPECT

JUSTICE

EQUALITY

LOVE
LOVE
LOVE

Source: http://scrutinyhooligans.us/2011/09/13/the-path-forwar/

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