North Carolina Bans Same-Sex Marriage and Civil Unions

[AiliailiA]

I think flooding the marriage registrar with FRIVOLOUS applications for marriage would be a terrible tactic. Like you don't take marriage seriously, or even worse "gays only want to get married to offend us"

[Northern Dominus]

I think flooding the marriage registrar with FRIVOLOUS applications for marriage would be a terrible tactic. Like you don't take marriage seriously, or even worse "gays only want to get married to offend us"

It's not frivilous, it's a tactic. Bog them down with so much paperwork that they can't get anything done and suddenly that amendment and law doesn't look like a good idea.

[AiliailiA]

I think flooding the marriage registrar with FRIVOLOUS applications for marriage would be a terrible tactic. Like you don't take marriage seriously, or even worse "gays only want to get married to offend us"

It's not frivilous, it's a tactic. Bog them down with so much paperwork that they can't get anything done and suddenly that amendment and law doesn't look like a good idea.

You're trying to get your way by force, not by persuasion. Sorry, but that's just bad. It will turn people against the cause.

Bogging down the courts so other cases can't come to trial harms innocents: people in jail on remand because they couldn't make bail. At least some of those people are INNOCENT. You'd be keeping them in jail longer.

I would strongly oppose this if it was proposed in any action committee I attended.

[Des-Bal]

It's not frivilous, it's a tactic. Bog them down with so much paperwork that they can't get anything done and suddenly that amendment and law doesn't look like a good idea.

I think a better idea would be for gay men to marry lesbians in quickie ceremonies only to have the marriages immediately annulled. I think it's more than a little bit fucked up that it's still possible to accidentally marry a stripper but not for two lifelong partners of the same sex to wed.

[Tmutarakhan]

The turnout was 34.38% of the eligible voters, and out of that 34.38%, 61.28% voted Yes. Now pay attention class: what percentage of the eligible voters voted Yes? We convert the percentages to decimals, take 0.3438 times 0.6128. Yes, it is OK to use your calculator for this. We round off the answer to .2107 because we only have four digits of precision in the data given, then we convert back to percent as 21.07%

You're using registered voters as the definition of "eligible". That's not really true is it?

Yes it is. If you're not registered, you're not eligible to vote.

also, it's (0.3438 ± 0.00005) x (0.6128 ± 0.00005) = (0.21068064 ± 0.0001) because multiplying you have to add the errors together. That answer could be anything between 0.21078 and 0.21058 ... it could actually be 21.06 ... but both round up to 21.1 so that's safe

To be sure, you should have dropped a digit of accuracy after multiplying, or used a more precise input (which wouldn't actually be justified since the count of registered voters is a rather fuzzy number). 21.1%

You have out-nerded me (and that's a high bar)

[AiliailiA]

You're using registered voters as the definition of "eligible". That's not really true is it?

Yes it is. If you're not registered, you're not eligible to vote.

It's a technicality. I prefer either VEP or VAP for statements like "x% of NCarolineans want y" because not being registered to vote, meaning they can't vote, does not mean that they don't support y, nor that they do support y. It strongly implies they don't give a rats either way (or they'd register) but how would they vote if they could/did? There isn't any way of knowing other than opinion polls which are a whole other thing.

I like to bring this up from time to time, because when the disenfranchisement of people (mainly by criminal record) is taken into account the historical trend towards lower turnouts is a lot less pronounced. I like to point out that people are being disenfranchised, disproportionately blacks, and sometimes I go into full rant mode for Felon Voting. I never seem to persuade anyone though.

That said, proportion of registered voters is the usual way of measuring turnout. It's sufficient for judgments about whether turnout is high or low compared with recent election turnouts. This one was pretty high.

[Hallistar]

It's not frivilous, it's a tactic. Bog them down with so much paperwork that they can't get anything done and suddenly that amendment and law doesn't look like a good idea.

I think a better idea would be for gay men to marry lesbians in quickie ceremonies only to have the marriages immediately annulled. I think it's more than a little bit fucked up that it's still possible to accidentally marry a stripper but not for two lifelong partners of the same sex to wed.

Gays getting married would destroy the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55 hour just-for-fun marriage.

[Nauritropia]

Sometimes democracy fails us :\

[Frisbeeteria]

I think flooding the marriage registrar with FRIVOLOUS applications for marriage would be a terrible tactic. Like you don't take marriage seriously, or even worse "gays only want to get married to offend us"

It's not frivilous, it's a tactic. Bog them down with so much paperwork that they can't get anything done and suddenly that amendment and law doesn't look like a good idea.

Today's Raleigh paper carried the story about 3 lesbian couples who applied for licenses and were denied. Two refused to leave at closing time and were arrested after 30 minutes of pleading by staff in the Registrar's Office. As far as I could tell, the only success of this tactic was to make a few bureaucrats late to pick up their kids from day care. Well, that and newspaper coverage of a silly event. I suppose that counts for something.

Northern Dominus, it's clear you Want To Do Something about this injustice, but you've got a terrible record for picking out protest targets that had nothing to do with the vote. State Representatives Paul 'Skip' Stam and Thom Tillis are the architects of this amendment. Both are up for election. Both have Democratic opponents in need of funding. Art Pope's Civitas Institute was a huge advertiser and direct mailer in support of the amendment. They're bankrolled by a $140 million foundation belonging to Art's late brother John Pope, so they're kinda hard to touch. Still, an obvious enough target if you can find a way to hurt them. Certainly better than a few hundred low level bureaucrats.

[Divair]

Next up: Marijuana legalization. I hope.

That's what we thought 40 years ago.

Support seems to be growing for legalization, though. Every week it seems like one company or another or some important political figure has decided to support legalization.

[Soheran]

I like to bring this up from time to time, because when the disenfranchisement of people (mainly by criminal record) is taken into account the historical trend towards lower turnouts is a lot less pronounced. I like to point out that people are being disenfranchised, disproportionately blacks, and sometimes I go into full rant mode for Felon Voting. I never seem to persuade anyone though.

It makes me very happy whenever I notice someone who notices this. And as someone who is increasingly disinclined to participate in NSG, I'm happy there's someone here who brings it up.

[Northern Dominus]

It's not frivilous, it's a tactic. Bog them down with so much paperwork that they can't get anything done and suddenly that amendment and law doesn't look like a good idea.

Today's Raleigh paper carried the story about 3 lesbian couples who applied for licenses and were denied. Two refused to leave at closing time and were arrested after 30 minutes of pleading by staff in the Registrar's Office. As far as I could tell, the only success of this tactic was to make a few bureaucrats late to pick up their kids from day care. Well, that and newspaper coverage of a silly event. I suppose that counts for something.

Northern Dominus, it's clear you Want To Do Something about this injustice, but you've got a terrible record for picking out protest targets that had nothing to do with the vote. State Representatives Paul 'Skip' Stam and Thom Tillis are the architects of this amendment. Both are up for election. Both have Democratic opponents in need of funding. Art Pope's Civitas Institute was a huge advertiser and direct mailer in support of the amendment. They're bankrolled by a $140 million foundation belonging to Art's late brother John Pope, so they're kinda hard to touch. Still, an obvious enough target if you can find a way to hurt them. Certainly better than a few hundred low level bureaucrats.

The only way to hurt a big well-funded propaganda think tank like Civitas would be to do something highly illegal that most people wouldn't be comfortable with IE either dragging the executive officers into the street and shooting them or paying for a professional hit.

No, they're in power, they have the money, and as long as nobody makes it inconvenient for their governmental lap dogs to get anything nothing is going to change. I agree that picketing the state reps you mentioned would be effective, so perhaps the gay barbarian horde could ride again....
Or failing that, the supporters would get the same treatment as the confirmed activist clergy who thought amendment one was a good idea. Namely they have no escape from facing the people they've just relegated to second-class citizenship, especially at rallies and during church services.

As far as the "swamping" tactic, what you see there is just the trickle. They inconvenienced a few people to start, but imagine of 100,000 people applied, or 1,000,000, daily. A constant stream of marriage applications that can't be signed but that have to be processed. This in turn bogs down the number of hetero couples that can be licensed per day.

That's the big idea. Disrupt everyone else's life as much as possible, and suddenly there's a really big incentive to at least skirt around the amendment for a start by the creation of civil unions. Chopping the head off for the moment isn't a possibility, too much money and influence. So the next best course of action is starving the bigoted elite of their fuel, namely the electorate. The simple truth is for anything to get done, Amendment One protests have to be loud, public, and inconvenient for a helluva lot of people.

[New Chalcedon]

*snips to avoid wall of text quote pyramid*

As mentioned above, that (stuffing the system with applications certain to be denied) is punishing people for being civil servants, not for how they voted. Given that my impression of civil servants is that they tend to be more socially liberal than the mainstream population, that's rather a perverse reaction, and really likely to peeve a bunch of people who probably voted for your (and my own) euqal rights in the first place.

Not a good idea. A better idea may well be to organise boycotts of donors to the pro-Amendment 1 campaign (or, in the case of umbrella organisations like Civitas, engage in some investigative journalism to find and boycott their donors), start fundraising for pro-civil rights candidates (almost certain to be Democrats, but be careful not to use too tight a set of blinkers when looking around - there is the occasional pro-civil rights Republican also) and generally take steps to win the battlefield, rather than ceding it.