NOM BLOG

William Duncan on the "Ludicrous" Claims that NC Amendment Will Take Away Rights

 

Legal scholar William C. Duncan over at NRO's The Corner blog:

The [Washington] Post story also relays some of the ludicrous claims that the North Carolina amendment would have unintended effects on all unmarried couples. A group of law professors at Campbell University have very effectively refuted such claims in a carefully-documented white paper. I’ve written about similar claims made against other amendments a few years ago in the Florida Coastal Law Review. It’s worth emphasizing that a majority of state marriage amendments also prohibit legal statuses that are just marriage by another name so what North Carolina is doing is hardly unprecedented. Some of these amendments have been on the books for eight years with none of the outcomes North Carolina gay-marriage advocates have predicted.

On the other hand, to understand why the proposed amendment’s drafters felt it necessary to include a prohibition of civil unions, one need only remember that a Ninth Circuit panel cited the fact that California had a marriage amendment and a civil-union statute simultaneously as a reason for invalidating California’s Proposition 8 just months ago.

11 Comments