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You’d think the Democratic Governor of North Carolina would have been well ahead of a Tea Party-affirming Republican member of Congress from our state (Renee Ellmers) in declaring opposition to the marriage amendment, but we had to wait until Friday for this tepid statement from Bev Perdue:
“My top priority is creating jobs. Too many people are out of work and I’ve heard from several business leaders who’ve told me that the proposed constitutional amendment will harm our state’s business climate and make it harder to grow jobs here. I believe that marriage is between one man and one woman: That’s why I voted for the law in 1996 that defines marriage as between one man and one woman, and that’s why I continue to support that law today. But I’m going to vote against the amendment because I cannot in good conscience look an unemployed man or woman in the eye and tell them that this amendment is more important than finding them a job. In addition, a number of legal experts have argued that this amendment, if passed, could eliminate legal protections for all unmarried couples in our state, regardless of sexual orientation. Right now, my focus, the General Assembly’s focus, and North Carolina’s focus needs to be on creating jobs.”
Perdue took the politically safe route of emphasizing the waste of time and money that the Republicans who pushed this amendment initiative through as unemployment plagues our state, but it is a slap in the face to use the statement to reiterate that every taxpaying LGBT citizen in this state is a second-class citizen and she likes it that way.
She didn’t have to do it, but she did. And that matters.
No one was expecting support for marriage equality from this pol, but damn, a kick in the gut like this is gratuitously mean.
Thanks for next-to-nothing, governor. We certainly know how you feel about us; you’ve made it perfectly clear (and I’m sure you won’t take any second-class gay dollars for your re-election, will you?).
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She’ll take LGBT dollars but they must be laundered and sanitized first. This is a great example of why the “two party system” is an incredible misnomer. The difference between she and a Republican is a difference in priorities, a tiny bit of tinkering around the edges of the great American hatred of everything “other”.
x2
I’m sure that she’ll consider those dollars to be sufficiently sanitized once they’ve left those icky LGBT hands and landed safely in her coffers…
WAY OT but…
I met a fairy today… she said she would grant me one wish.
“I want to live forever,” I said.
“Sorry,” said the fairy, “I’m not allowed to grant wishes like that!”
“Fine,” I said, “then I want to die after Obama and Congress get their heads out of their asses!”
…”You sneaky bastard,” said the fairy.
Don’t we all wish…
Our options are between Gov Perdue who signed into law an LGBT inclusive anti-bullying bill, who vetoed a voter suppression bill that would hurt communities of color, women, and young people, and she will personally be voting against the marriage discrimination amendment.
She will be running against a Republican (Pat McCrory) who will be voting for the amendment, who likely would not have signed the LGBT anti-bullying bill, and who definitely wouldn’t have vetoed the voter suppression.
Their personal belief on marriage is pretty similar, but as far as how they would behave in office, there is an incredibly sharp distinction between him and her – especially for a southern state.
Let’s hope she brings out the LBGT vote — against her!
What a creep.
So sad that we have to support a jerk in order not to get a maniac.
With all due respect, we thought that about Barry also.
Bev Perdue may not share your feelings on gay marriage but that simply does not matter since she has shown herself to be a person who votes beyond her own beliefs and what is for the reater good. Your option is a person who makes no bones about being a bigot and will vote the bigot ticket all the way down. Politicians are not perfect. I don’t care if they validate me so long as they vote in a way that represents me. Sometimes librals really annoy me. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Sometimes you just have to be happy with winning. And the sad fact is the NC congress will overrule her veto, as they have everything else.
Another democrat sucking up to conservatives…
Has Obama been teaching a course on bipartisan ass-kissing, in the White House basement?
Marriage is between one man and one woman? Hmm, seems marriage is a series of one man/one woman encounters. They divorce a lot, you know. That’s the moral high ground? They dare to lecture? Marriage has been about property rights, not love.
Marriage as a holy sacrament? OK, but not everyone wants to have a church wedding, or believes in the idea of something ‘holy’ or ‘sacramental.’ Screw religion. This issue is about civil rights.
People who believe in superstition and magical thinking cannot comprehend this, and can basically go fuck themselves.
Another cheap coward who takes the politically easy route of pandering instead of the more difficult but rewarding path of political courage.
We need political sellouts like Perdue like a raging case of syphilis. They are a blight on our political system.
P.S. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, gay people, and others, aren’t asking for permission anymore. Get out of the way.
The sooner the Democratic Party dies, the better. I’m jolly well sick and tired of them being a buffer against progress.
Obama is a snake.
She certainly is an example of a Perdue Chicken…..and Governor, your Biblically afflicted right wing friends don’t believe that you are equal, either….injustice aganst anyone threatens justice for everyone, governor.
Eejit!
To quote a snarky saying we use on my last Navy ship:
Not only is she amoral, she’s also stupid. If she’s going to come out against the marriage amendment, the Fundies are going to accuse her of being a ball-busting bulldagger no matter how much she decides to deny the full humanity of LGBTs. She might as well go big or she’s going to go home, because most people hate fence-straddling cowards more than they do persons who state and then back up their convictions.
These Bible-bangin’ Tea Party Rethuglican types like Perdue are really getting on my nerves.
The Democrat Party.
Keepin’ it classy since Fort Sumter.
I had written her asking for her opinion on the amendment and got the same canned response in her reply. I guess she realizes she can’t get anything done as a Dem. Gov. with Rep. house/senate. If you can’t beat them than join them… But she is opposing state opinion let alone going against the party. She’s going to make the Repub’s happy being voted out of office. Not much of a loss.
The only positive I can see in it is she’s providing a path forward for those who oppose the amendment but don’t want to think of themselves as pro-equality or pro-gay. It’s highly disappointing for sure in a democratic governor, but I’m sure there are many voters in the state who are anti-gay and will only vote “no” if they can be convinced that there is something more important at stake than their personal bias.
We need a better Dem than this, Jake, considering the leadership of the NCDP in David Parker. Since her position on marriage equality was already known underscoring her personal and political bigotry was completely unnecessary, therefore craven. She could have mentioned that “the people” shouldn’t vote on another group’s civil rights, which doesn’t say anything about her personal position on marriage, but she failed to do that, and chose a more inflammatory statement to include. I’d like a pro-equality Dem, but I’d settle for one that doesn’t backstab us publicly to gain votes.
Anytime a pol claims it’s a waste of time and money to pursue an initiative when there are other things to do, look out!
This is a feint, and no more. It is an admission by the Gov that she can’t endure multitasking, which also means she shouldn’t be in office.
She needs to formally support LGBT, take a firm stance against the amendment for the right reasons, and accept the consequences.
Trying to snooker the electorate will not do, and should disqualify her on the next ballot. She needs to oppose the amendment BECAUSE she supports LGBT. It ain’t rocket science.
How nice it is at least for the Gov.the general implied assertion gays do not deserve to live has morphed into they are 2d class citizens–a form of “I may not hold the rail when I walk downstairs, but if you have a gene that makes you inclined to drink booze, you’re inferior.”
The tradition of
making straight people afraid of being wrongly ferreted out as gay, in
fact, is the fear of fascism.
That fear is based on the assertion gays do not deserve to live.
It has morphed for many of that ilk, maybe the majority of them, into: they are second class citizens.
Homosexuality, after so many generations, can be occuring nothing more / less than optimally, providing numerical genetic advantage “to the group.” There’s an endless of ways that is thus achieved I alone can readily imagine.
The process caused the production in communities inclined to the demonization– which provided the opportunity to associate any foe with the demonized: first gays, then Jews, then nations were immigrated–to produce gays particularly thus trained in the “art” of knowing and transfering fear for profit. It also has served the purposes of pacification by way of judging for control. Ultimately, transference has made major portions of the population fear anyone resembling obnoxious priors
(that best point of explaining transference, especially if we are to now
grow psychiatrically, science-wise, morally and in terms of history, rather than simply perish by fighting in the streets exactly as earlier civilizations appear to have done, should you care taking up the cause.)
Does not condemn traditional morality. Why. The East: identical.
Had it been suggested “only the bad process self-produced deceiving gays” are to be shunned, then Hitler (feminine,) J. Edgar Hoover, and JFK’s assassin would not have happened. Scapegoating for profit continues precisely where the population effect is, in parallel, totally telling: Russia. Africa proves the point exquisitely, as if a fish bowl.
History can only turn when scapegoating ends. Scapegoating can only be replaced with understanding, not new scapegoating.
How sad are the attacks on Mitt Romney’s family traditions, when
all Earth’s religions are simply overlapping curiosities, virtually
all the Western ones having suffered, and differing only
degree of offense, from the misconception described in this website.
Indeed, Romney’s, like isolated others, are actually a little more open
to the idea of a conveyed understanding.
As to the Governor, I OBVIOUSLY CANNOT KNOW ANYTHING WHATSOEVER AS TO ANY
ASPECT OF HER PSYCHE, (SAME: AS TO ANY RELATION(S))and her actions most likely are simply strategic.
However, the above theorizes persons given to insultingly saying people
don’t deserve to live or are inferior in any preposterous fashion are, apart from the ordinary “DEVELOPMENTAL” / “GENETIC” combined natural incidence, that actually confirmed not just by the 2003 work done at the N.I.H. but by the proposed simultaneous proof in science – morality – history, are likelier to be gay gene carriers themselves.
I think humans and life is infinitely variable and actually still given to morality.
For a situation to be “the perfect being the enemy of the good”, there has to be some good. In this case, you’re accusing people who are demanding some good of letting “the good” be “the enemy of the not-entirely-horrible”. Which is as it should be.