A prominent local businessman asked me this weekend if I thought there would be a gay exodus from NC in the wake of Amendment One. I would guess that most people will refuse to be chased from their homes.
Barbara Fedders addresses the same question in the N&O:
Many of my lesbian and gay friends are talking exodus. Canada, the Netherlands; Washington, New York, Massachusetts. I’m staying instead.
...I’m going to stay – and fight.
I often quote the words of Paul Robeson at the McCarthy hearings when people ask such questions of this native North Carolinian who happens to be gay.
Asked why he had not remained in the USSR, he replied that "because ... my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you and no fascist minded people will drive me from it! Is that clear?"
Posted by: designation | May 14, 2012 at 01:25 PM
I see no signs of exodus, but friends I've been trying to lure to North Carolina from Seattle and Vancouver have promised they'll never come. I suppose that's all part of the GOP plan for our oh-so-Christian state.
Posted by: James | May 14, 2012 at 02:45 PM
Even though it was easy to see coming, I felt like I'd been kicked in the gut last Tuesday night. That was mostly because hope and expectations have risen to a level that was unthinkable a short time ago. If some decided to leave, I would certainly understand, but this place belongs to me as much as it does to anyone else. One sad, fearful little vote against the future can't change that. They might as well have voted to stop the motion of the ocean or the sun in the sky. (Hairspray fans, sing along ...)
Posted by: Patrick | May 14, 2012 at 03:28 PM
Everyone knows my opinion on it. I'm going to Brussels as a student in August, and to be frank, if I can manage employment, legal or not, I may not come back.
Posted by: liv | May 14, 2012 at 03:46 PM
I bow to no one in my disappointment about the vote on A1. But I've had it with the NC-bashing. NC was not the first state to carve this particular brand of discrimination into a constitution, only the latest one to join that shameful majority. Thankfully, acceptance of marriage equality is moving at warp-speed and it is just a matter of time before it is the law of the land. But in the meantime, sadly, the outcome of an A1 vote would have been exactly the same (albeit by different margins) in almost every single state in the union. We're not outliers, we're just latecomers.
And without NC's vote on Tuesday, perhaps the President wouldn't have said what he said on Wednesday.
Which, in the long run, was much more important than the outcome on A1.
Posted by: JB | May 14, 2012 at 04:37 PM
I have in my ancestry a Virginia Baptist preacher who was his local church's hit man targeting anyone the elders considered sinful. He'd be the one to tell them they couldn't come to church anymore and ensure that the rest of the locals joined in the ostracism.
The amendment was spearheaded and passed by people with the same sense of superiority. People who can use the law to keep you from living with someone you want to live with are people who are capable, for example, of creating laws that discriminate based on religious behavior, like church attendance, at the "right" churches.
My ancestor got his comeuppance when, elected to the new Virgina state legislature in 1778, he was not allowed to take his seat because Virgina law, at the behest on one Mr. Jefferson, banned clergy from the legislature. (Here, Jefferson was just as arrogant and just as wrong as those busybody local churchmen.)
Posted by: justcorbly | May 14, 2012 at 06:29 PM
Banned clergy from the legislature you say! But I thought Mr. Jefferson was one of those Founding Fathers who intended this here being a Christian nation? Next you'll dare tell that he placed constitutional limits on how much property a church in the Commonwealth could own ...
Posted by: Account Deleted | May 14, 2012 at 08:42 PM
In his old age, Jeff, Jefferson acknowledged that clergy in the U.S. had not turned into the wealthy politically influential types he feared. Perhaps he'd revert to his original position if he was alive today.
My ancestor got himself arrested at least once for preaching in public before the revolution and spent a few days in a Culpepper, VA jail. (Or, gaol, I suppose.)
The records of the Virginia legislature during the revolution are all online.
Posted by: justcorbly | May 14, 2012 at 09:55 PM
Of course that is Culpeper - one "p", home of the Minutemen - you know those fancy Don't Tread on Me stickers/flags, etc. And here I sit a block from the current jail.
Posted by: Brian | May 15, 2012 at 04:31 PM
"In his old age, Jeff, Jefferson acknowledged that clergy in the U.S. had not turned into the wealthy politically influential types he feared."
Perhaps he simply didn't live long enough to see it.
Posted by: Billy Jones | May 15, 2012 at 05:17 PM