IiTjani Metropolitan CSoniraunitu Church
^ ofDarfaar—^ ^
jUXeCuial C^mS
^jsen!
■—
Palm Sunday Api^Sf
“Once CIpop^ Tree”
an Caster Cantata ^ Pepper Choplin
Easter Sunday
2009
cation: 305 E. TrinitygiSSft&rham NC
Join US! Palm Sunday, April 5tn ar2^5pm for a Musical
Presentation of Pepper Choplin’s “Once Opoga Tree” performed by
the Imani MCC Music Team. Also JoinuaonSunday, April 12th at'
2:4Spm for Easter Worship Service. Please Call 919.286.7394 for
more info or visit www.ImaniMCC.org
$15 ® pan
PERSPECTIVE
4 MARCH 21 .2009* ftNot es
Editor’s Note
by Matt Comer . Q-Notes staff
N.C.’s relimous right:
Digging their own graves
In the past few weeks we’ve seen North
Carolina’s reUgious right (I like to refer to
them as “Rabid Righties”) praise and laud a
proposed state constitutional amendment that
would discriminate against LGBT people and
jump, scream, yell and holler over proposed
pieces of legislation that would offer safety —
physically, mentally and otherwise — to Tar
Heel youth, regardless of sexual orientation
and gender-identity.
The Rabid Righties have been steamrolling
the American Promise as they head across the
state pushing through local, municipal resolu
tions in support of a state constitutional
amendment banning any civil recognition of
relationships between adults other dian those
of married, one man-one woman couples. In
most counties and cities, these insidious reso
lutions have passed unanimously. Only one
county, that I know of, has had the cajones to
defeat the resolution presented to them.
Groups like Return America, led by radi
cally anti-gay Winston-Salem pastor Ron
Baity, the teetotaling
Christian Action League
and NC4Marriage, a coali
tion run by the N.C. Family
Policy Council (although
they won’t openly admit it),
are vying for their chance to
make North Carolina just
like all our other Southern
neighbors. North Carolina,
thank God, remains the
only state in the southeast
ern U.S. without an anti-gay
amendment.
But all this clamoring
and rabid, frothy-mouthed
insanity is beginning to have
an effect opposite of what I
can only imagine Baity, the Action League and
NC4Marriage actually desire.
Since Q-Notes' last print issue, two key
pieces of legislation were finally introduced in
both houses of the General Assembly. The first,
the School Violence Prevention Act, would pro
tect students from harassment and bullying
regardless of sexual orientation and gender-
identity, among other enumerated categories.
The second, the Healthy Youth Act, would
repeal the state’s miserably failed “abstinence-
only” sex ed courses and replace them with a
much better, more useful, instructive and edu
cational comprehensive curriculum.
These bills aren’t new. Moderate and pro
gressive legislators have been introducing
them for years. This session, though, the com
munity, state and media are paying more and
more attention to the safe schools and sex ed
bills. The Rabid Right is to blame.
Their duplicitous lies about the effects of
the bills are getting the media’s attention. In
turn, community members and voters (who
overwhelmingly support hoik bills) are speak
ing out and turning to their elected officials,
urging them to vote for and co-sponsor them.
It look as though the right is digging their
own grave.
Ian Palmquist, executive director of
EqualityNC, agrees that the religious right is
doing our side a huge favor.
“I think we’ve seen moderate leg
islators who could go either way on
our issues really get sick and tired of
the negative attacks on our communi
ty from the religious right,” Palmquist
told me. “I actually think that some of
the rhetoric that they’ve been spouting can
work to our advantage.”
It is time for North Carolina to move into
the 21st century and forget the backward,
harmful legacy of anti-gay hatred and bigotry.
Legislators and conservative activists who
stand against the safe schools bill really only
do it for one reason: they don’t want queer
kids protected. And, there’s really only one rea
son to not want the LGBT kids protected —
these folks believe they shouldn’t be.
Rabid Right leaders like Tami Fitzgerald,
executive director of NC4Marriage (and the
attorney at N.C. Family Policy Council), have
said the safe schools and sex ed bills will open
the door to having children taught that gay
relationships are acceptable. Although that’s
really not the intention of the two bUls, I really
don’t mind if that’s the outcome.
The current abstinence-only education is
a joke — teens are getting pregnant by the
bus load and straight and gay kids are get
ting infected with life-long and sometimes
N.C. state Rep. Rick Glazier stands with fellow members
of.the N.C. General Assembly at a press conference intro
ducing the School Violence Prevention Act in the House
and Senate.
Photo Credit: EqualityNC
deadly diseases because they aren’t being
taught how to protect themselves and they
aren’t receiving the fair, equitable and safe
acceptance and support they need from men
tors and school leaders.
While the right is worrying about sin and
eternal damnation, young people in this state
are making horrible, ignorant and preventable
choices now — choices that will impact their
lives here on earth long before they reach
those pearly or fiery gates. I don’t think God’s
gonna mind if we give them the tools to pro
tect themselves as they grow, make mist^es
and live to make better ones.
North Carolina’s rabid, deceitful religious
bigots need to get their heads out of the sand
and into reality. If they really cared about this
state’s children, they’d be spending more time
pushing for these two bills and less time
fighting to write discrimination into a docu
ment created to ensure equality and justice.
Instead, they’re too busy worrying about their
own agenda.
Our state motto challenges us “to be, rather
than to seem.” I’m telling our dear religious
right to cool it and to be real Christians —
caring and working for the outsiders and mar
ginalized — rather than to only seem so
under their false veneer of “because the Bible
says so” bullshit. 9