NC vote: No legal rights for partners in ANY civil union, gay or straight [View all]

I wonder how many heterosexuals voted today to diminish their OWN legal rights by a hard-to-overturn constitutional amendment.

WHAT'S YOUR OPINION?

http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/05/08/11584860-north-carolina-marriage-amendment-could-impact-gay-and-straight-couples

"North Carolina marriage amendment could impact gay and straight couples

By Miranda Leitsinger, msnbc.com

Updated at 10:30 p.m. ET: North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment Tuesday night banning gay marriage and – going a step further than most other states with an anti-gay marriage amendment – scrapping civil unions for gay and straight couples. The state becomes the last southern state to approve an anti-gay marriage amendment and joins 30 others with similar measures. Incomplete returns Tuesday night showed the amendment passing by 60 percent of the vote.

The amendment, also known as Amendment 1, would make marriage the only legal domestic union that would be valid in the state. But opponents say the measure is unnecessary because a state statute has banned gay marriage in North Carolina since 1996. They say domestic partners – both straight and gay – and their children could lose health benefits. ...

... John Dinan, a political science professor at Wake Forest University, ... said the amendment’s impacts would not be immediate. “The one place it could make a difference is in eight or nine cities in North Carolina that give out insurance benefits to same-sex couples,” Dinan said. “Lawyers might have to start taking a real close look at those insurance benefits that are given out and they might have to change those.” ...

Jeremy Kennedy, campaign manager for Protect All NC Families said he worries that the eight or nine cities that currently offer domestic partnership benefits to public employees may drop those benefits if the amendment passes. “We know the consequences that we’re listing, but there’s a whole bunch of unintended consequences that we probably haven’t even thought of yet that will come up in the courts after this,” Kennedy said. ..."

Msnbc.com's Isolde Raftery contributed to this report.