Guilford County register of deeds responds to action in Buncombe on gay marriage

File photo of Jeff Thigpen

Guilford County Register of Deeds Jeff Thigpen responded to a press release by Buncombe County's register of deeds earlier today in support of gay marriage (which you can read more about by clicking here or just scrolling down). Here's Thigpen's full public statement:

"Drew [Reisinger]'s leadership and recent decision to accept marriage applications show he has his shoulders to the grind moving in the right direction on this issue. I appreciate the steps he is taking in light of the recent Supreme Court decisions and an [NC Attorney General] opinion is certainly in order.  I'm assessing these new developments closely and will be talking with my county attorney tomorrow morning."

Below: Thigpen prayed with proponents of marriage equality in downtown Greensboro last month before they sought same-sex marriage licenses from his office, which he regretfully declined. 

Buncombe County register of deeds willing to issue gay marriage licenses

Buncombe County Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger said in a press release this afternoon that he is willing to issue gay marriage licenses, accepting but not signing the licenses and asking Attorney General Roy Cooper to weigh in on the issue. Local residents, as part of a statewide campaign, plan to seek same-sex marriage licenses from Reisinger tomorrow. Efforts by the Campaign for Southern Equality in other North Carolina counties, including Guilford and Forsyth, have been turned down, though Guilford County Register of Deeds expressed his personal support for marriage equality. 

Reisinger's move puts Cooper, a Democrat, in an interesting position, particularly because he recently said that he will run for governor in 2016 (in fact, he made the statement in Buncombe County). Below is Reisinger's full press release. The Campaign for Southern Equality released a similar statement minutes later. 

"Buncombe County Register of Deeds Drew Reisinger will be the first government official in the South to seek approval to grant same-sex marriage licenses since the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act.

Reisinger will accept and hold same-sex marriage applications and push the question of equal marriage rights to the state’s chief legal adviser, Attorney General Roy Cooper.

“I will let each couple know that it is my hope to grant them a license, but I need to seek the North Carolina Attorney General’s approval," Reisinger said. "I have concerns about whether we are violating people's civil rights based on this summer's Supreme Court decision."

The Campaign for Southern Equality notified Reisinger that at least six same-sex couples would request marriage licenses Tuesday. Reisinger will allow the couples to complete and sign their applications. He will accept the applications but withhold his own signature.

“I will then let the Attorney General know that I would like to issue these couples licenses, but that I need his clarification on the laws of the state that seem to contradict the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution,” Reisinger said.

Tuesday will be the first time same-sex couples have requested marriage licenses from Reisinger since the June 26 Supreme Court decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act."

ACLU challenging "Amendment One" gay marriage ban

The ACLU announced today it will challenge last year's "Amendment One," a statewide constitutional ban on gay marriage, as part of an existing lawsuit for gay rights in adoptions. We wrote about the existing lawsuit for second-parent adoption rights, which includes a family from Greensboro. Here's the press release (below):

RALEIGH – Today the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the ACLU of North Carolina Legal Foundation (ACLU-NCLF) announced plans to challenge North Carolina’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples by amending a federal lawsuit filed against the state last year on behalf of six same-sex couples and their children that challenges North Carolina’s ban on second parent adoptions. The announcement comes on the same day that the ACLU has filed a federal challenge to Pennsylvania’s marriage ban and the ACLU and Lambda Legal have announced a challenge to Virginia’s marriage ban.

The ACLU is asking North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper to agree to allow an additional claim challenging the state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples to be added to Fisher-Borne v. Smith, a lawsuit filed last year in Greensboro in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina that challenges the state’s ban on second parent adoption, a process by which one partner in an unmarried gay or straight couple adopts the other partner’s biological or adoptive child. If the Attorney General’s office does not agree to the addition of the new claim, the ACLU will petition the court to allow the claim to be added.

Marcie and Chantelle Fisher-Borne, one of the couples in the case, have been together for 16 years and live in Durham. Each woman carried one of their two children -- a 5-year-old girl and a 1-year-old boy. They had a wedding in North Carolina 10 years ago and were legally married in Washington, D.C. in 2011, but their marriage is not recognized by North Carolina law. When their daughter was born, the couple met resistance from a hospital staff member who demanded their legal paperwork. If they were legally married in North Carolina, their family would be respected and such encounters could be avoided.

“Our children have two parents who love them dearly.  Like any parents, we want to be able to do everything we can to care for our children.  Our children deserve the security of having both Marcie and me as legally recognized parents, and marriage is the best way for us to provide that to them,” said Chantelle Fisher-Borne. “We declared our love and commitment to each other years ago, but the law in North Carolina does not recognize the life we have built together or allow us to share legal responsibility for the children we have raised together. We want to be married for many of the same reasons anyone else does – to do what’s best for our family, especially our children, and have our commitment to each other recognized by the law.” 

Marriage would help same-sex couples protect their children by ensuring that all children in the family are covered if one partner lacks health insurance, that families will stay together and children will not be torn from the only home they’ve known if something should happen to the biological or legally recognized parent, and that either parent will be allowed to make medical decisions or be able to be by their child’s bedside if one of their children is hospitalized.

“The past year has witnessed a sea change in the quest to secure the freedom to marry for all committed couples across the nation and in North Carolina,” said Chris Brook, Legal Director of the ACLU-NCLF. “From President Obama and Senator Hagan’s endorsements to the recent landmark Supreme Court decision declaring the so-called Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, support for the freedom to marry has moved forward by leaps and bounds.  Conversations are happening at dinner tables throughout our state with more and more North Carolinians agreeing that the rights and responsibilities that come with marriage should not be denied to loving and committed couples simply because they are gay or lesbian. Our announcement today is the next step in that conversation.”

The move to amend the North Carolina lawsuit comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in another ACLU case, United States v. Windsor, which found that the federal Defense of Marriage Act defining marriage as between one man and one woman was unconstitutional.

“Under DOMA, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority in Windsor, adding that creating a “second-tier” status for same-sex couples “demeans the couple, whose moral and sexual choices the Constitution protects … [a]nd it humiliates tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples. The law in questions makes it even more difficult for the children to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” 

'Drive a wedge between gays and blacks'

An internal memo (link) by a national traditional marriage group that was disclosed earlier this week lends credence to a charge made by NC House District 72 candidate Ed Hanes at a candidate forum last night in northeast Winston-Salem.

The document drafted by the National Organization for Marriage, entitled “Marriage: $20 million strategy for victory,” discloses

The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks — two key Democratic constituencies. We aim to find, equip, energize and connect African-American spokespeople for marriage, to develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; and to provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of the party. [page 13]

A key part of the strategy is to knock Obama off balance:

Expose Obama as a social radical. Develop side issues to weaken pro-gay marriage political leaders and parties and develop an activist base of socially conservative voters. Raise such issues as pornography, protection of children, and the need to oppose all efforts to weaken religious liberty at the federal level. [page 11]

North Carolina, where a constitutional amendment defining marriage as strictly between a man and a woman, gets special attention in a heading that urges:

Go on the offense: Win victories by pushing for marriage amendments in conservative states, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Indiana will be the top priorities. [page 7]

Hanes, an African-American candidate for NC House, told (link) a predominantly black audience in Winston-Salem last night:

We have to move as a community to be strong, to stand up and to not let the Republican Party use this issue as a wedge in our community and try to turn this into Ohio 2004. Does everybody know what I’m talking about when I say, ‘Ohio 2004’? The Republican Party inserted the issue of gay rights into Ohio as a wedge in the black community because they know this is an issue in our community, something we don’t want to talk about.

It’s something we try to deny. It’s something we try to say doesn’t exist. And they knew that if they put it in the churches that it would split our churches straight down the middle. They did it because they knew that the president at that time might win by the slimmest of margins if they could divide that black community and that black evangelical vote. And that is what happened. George W. Bush got a second term because we as African-American people in this country allowed that issue to divide us.

H/T: Institute for Southern Studies