NC Senate Bill Would Bully Same-Sex Couples

Soucek & Jordan

S2, the Phil Berger law that would make discrimination by Register of Deeds offices legal in North Carolina, quickly passed through an NC Senate committee yesterday on a voice vote and was expected on the floor of the full Senate today. It'll sail through there too -- you bet! -- with Senator Dan Soucek joining the chorus of "We want another of our laws overturned as unconstitutional!"

S2, which would allow magistrates to shirk their duty to marry same-sex couples because of "a sincerely held religious objection," will be struck down as unconstitutional even faster than the General Assembly's ultrasound requirement. Here are some of the arguments that will doom it as another unnecessary embarrassment for the state of North Carolina:

1. A "sincerely held religious objection" is never defined. Does that apply only to those who go pale at The Gay or also, say, to Catholics who don't approve of second marriages?

2. The law singles out a class of individuals for unequal treatment. You can't do that, dudes.

3. The law would impose a religious test on a single class of individuals by elevating the individual religious beliefs of a public official as a legal hurdle to equal access to a basic right.

4. The law was conceived and written as a way to deny or at least hamper equal access to marriage for same-sex couples and is capricious on the face of it.

So go ahead, Republicans -- especially you, Senator Soucek and Representative Jonathan Jordan -- waste more time and taxpayer money passing this stink-bomb of a law. It will never go into effect, and you will once again be proven the autocratic bullies you've always been.