The children of Greensboro, NC's Lindley Park community have been writing, printing, and distributing their own xerographic newspaper, The Lindley Park Gazette for a few years now. The neighborhood paper is funded by $5 ads bought by neighborhood businesses, and is distributed to over 300 homes and businesses.The paper isn't just kid's stuff. There's serious stuff in this rag. Lucy Newsom and her staff cover real issues affecting the area, including Amendment One.
A few months ago, I posted a pro-equality editorial by Max Gearhart which ran in the Gazette. Now, with the May 8 vote fast approaching, the paper has published an editorial urging their readers (or perhaps their parents) to vote against the amendment.
This editorial is a collective stance taken by the entire staff of kids who publish the paper. The editorial was published in the May 2 edition of the paper.
We've spent months making signs, marching, researching and reporting. We have made videos. We write about this in our paper.
The one thing we can not do is vote.
Please vote (for us) against Amendment One.
The North Carolina Same-Sex Marriage Amendment will appear on the May 8, 2012 ballot in the state of North Carolina.
Our parents have the opportunity to vote on this. We hope they will vote AGAINST it. And here is why:
Sometimes, as kids, we feel like we are in the minority. Just because we are young. We literally cannot vote. Sometimes we get bullied because we are small. It is not fair for the big guys to beat up on the little guys. It is scary on the playground but it is terrifying when the people who are supposed to protect you are part of the bullying.
Amendment One would write bullying into the NC state constitution.
What if the dominant religion in North Carolina said that all women have to wear burquas or that children can be sold into slavery or told who they have to marry? What if you thought - and of course you would – Hey, that is not cool! Women have rights! Kids need to be protected! But this religion was so popular that it had power to take away rights from those less powerful. To make their beliefs into the LAW. It would feel terrible if you were bullied by your state. That is what this amendment feels like to us. Bullying.
The sad fact is that bullying happens. It happens on the playground and in governments all over the world. We can’t let it happen here in North Carolina.
We understand that most of the religious leaders in North Carolina are speaking out against this as unfair. We know that religion is not the enemy. Most religious leaders see that it is bullying. But there are some leaders in religion and politics and even in the media who have misused their power to BE bullies. To try to write bullying into the CONSTITUTION. To make discrimination part of a document that is supposed to protect ALL of us.
We believe that gay marriage is fine. It is cool with us. But more than that, no matter how you feel about gay people, bullying is never OK. Never. We pledge to stand up for the people who are getting bullied, no matter who they are. We will not let the bullies win on the playground or in our government.
Please VOTE (for us) AGAINST AMENDMENT ONE.
This is amazing.
ReplyDeleteThose kids are teaching the adults about bullying. Brilliant.
ReplyDeleteThose kids are parroting the anti-bullying crusade invented by the left in order to preclude the religious right from ever taking a stand or giving voice to their convictions, or saying things like, "This has gone far enough." Because honestly, if the religious right won't say things like that, who will? Where is the left's logical argument against polygamy? Incest between adults? What's sad is that these kids don't understand how their generation will be the victims of this gay rights revolution:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pointofview.net/site/News2?news_iv_ctrl=1201&id=6198
You are right in only one way, I am sure polygamy will be the next fight. I don't see anything wrong with consenting adults in a relationship of any kind. That being said, the issues of polygamy in terms of benefits, custody, income tax, etc would need to be reworked. Where as gay marriage would just be marriage.
DeleteAll the gay kids getting death threats and being abused and becoming homeless because they're being kicked out of their homes by their families is REALLY happening. RIGHT NOW. All the religious right's worries (polygamy, etc.) always seem to be theoretical worries about an imaginary future that never seems to come true.
DeleteWhere is the right's logical argument for thinking they have the right to tell anyone how they should live their life as long as they're doing no harm?
ReplyDeleteI'm no advocate of incest, beastiality or any other ridiculous "slippery slope" arguement you may come up with, but what's truly sad is that you think any human rights beyond your own are yours to judge or dictate.
"The argument that the availability of marriage would encourage monogamy among homosexuals, while not affecting heterosexuals at all, is particularly specious. It assumes, first, that marriage is what the homosexuals seek, rather than the status of normality that marriage confers."
DeleteSee the article I linked to above for a thorough treatment of the dreadful effects of conferring such a normality upon the homosexual relationship. It should seem like the most obvious, self-evident thing in the world that the homosexual relationship is abnormal. I can hardly believe I would need to explain it, yet I see that I do again and again.
"Why stop here? What about people whose desires cannot be fulfilled unless they perform sexual actions in public? Or with animals? Or with precocious children? Or with the dead -- so long as the dead can be shown to have consented?
The reader is correct to find the suggestions appalling. But logic requires an answer. If you affirm the false principle, you must go where that principle leads. As for now, the only thing preventing the collapse of all sexual constraints is a residual feeling of disgust. That is one rickety door to batter down."
Perhaps you will allow that homosexuals know more about what they seek than the Christian right. Normalcy....no, equality, yes. The right to have your life partner make end of life decisions for you, be provided for in the event of your death, have rights to the child you raise together, yes.
Delete"Why stop here? Ah the old slippery slope, used in trying to stop black's rights, women's rights and now gay rights. Amazing by now that their is a society at all with all those slippery slope dire predictions.
What about people whose desires cannot be fulfilled unless they perform sexual actions in public? Are you not aware those sex clubs already exist? And that homosexual rights do not touch indecency rights, or are trying.
Or with animals? Consenting adults. Get it?
Or with precocious children? Again consenting adults
Or with the dead -- so long as the dead can be shown to have consented? Past consent is not the same as able to consent, so again... consenting adults.
As for your belief that the homosexual relationship is abnormal, it is your right to think that. But not your right to use YOUR belief as to what is normal to stop MY rights for equality.
Not directly related to the content of this post, (Eric, I tried and failed to find an email address to contact you directly about it). But when viewing this post on my smartphone from Google reader, at the bottom of the post was an ad from the *pro* amendment group "Marriage for NC". I did click the ad for the satisfaction of knowing a few cents from that hate group would go toward this great blog :)
ReplyDeleteI know you probably have little control over what ads show up, it's just kind of ironic, or maybe moronic.