Q Toon: N. Carolina's Amendment One

Returning to the 21st Century for a moment, let's turn our attention to the Tarheel State. Next Tuesday, voters go to the polls to vote on amending their state constitution to make sure that future generations never repeal the law defining marriage as a special right for heterosexual couples.

The tide may be turning against these constitutional amendments -- too late for most of the country, to be sure -- but it's hard to imagine this sort of referendum failing anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line, even with the announced opposition of a number of North Carolina clergy members.

Or with the support of people like this:

Chad Nance, a Winston-Salem freelance journalist who is currently active in electoral campaigning, says poll workers outside the early voting site at the Forsyth County Government Center in downtown Winston-Salem reported to him that the wife of NC Sen. Peter Brunstetter remarked today that her husband sponsored legislation to put the marriage amendment on the primary ballot “to protect the Caucasian race.”
Nance said he recorded a conversation with the woman, whose name is Jodie Brunstetter, on video, and that she confirmed that she used the term “Caucasian” in a discussion about the marriage amendment, but insisted that otherwise her comments had been taken out of context by other poll workers. ...
He said Brunstetter reluctantly acknowledged that she had used the term “Caucasian” and then repeated the statement previously attributed to her, but substituted the pronoun “we” for “Caucasian. Nance said Brunstetter insisted there was nothing racial about her remarks, but could not explain why she used the term “Caucasian.” 

And this:

 Sean Harris, the Senior Pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, NC, giving his congregation a "special dispensation" to beat their children if they think they might be falling outside of gender norms:

 "So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”
You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”
Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that."

 And, to nobody's surprise, this:

A Cabarrus County teenager posted a video on YouTube that has attracted the attention of deputies and Amendment One opponents...They believe the 17-year-old Jonathan Wiles took [a lawn sign against Amendment One] from an intersection and set it up in his backyard where he recorded himself firing several shots at it. The video was later posted to YouTube [and has since been taken down].
Before firing the shots, Wiles talked about his strong support of the marriage amendment, saying, “Somebody decided it would be a good idea to put this sign by my house. They ought to know not to put stuff like that near my house.”