The proponents of Amendment One have released a new response ad to the powerful ad (seen above) aired by the Protect ALL NC Families coalition, working to defeat the anti-gay marriage amendment. I'm told that it represents not a plus media buy, but rather, they have repurposed time from their initial ad buy to respond.
Watch it below and see if you see what I see?
(Continue reading below the fold)
The Reality
They claim their "legal experts" say there is no concern for collateral damage and all it does is ban gay marriage.
Carlos Maza looked into their experts over at Equality Matters: Meet The “Legal Experts” Supporting North Carolina’s Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment. Suffice it to say, they have neither credentials nor creditability for voters to trust their judgement nor will they survive media scrutiny. What they do have in abundance is a history of hating gay people. Surprise.
These legal gun for hire "experts," like the amendment proponents, would clearly place their desire to hurt gay and lesbian people above what is best for the state of North Carolina. But every single law professor employed in North Carolina has big concerns.
The University of North Carolina law school vetted the bill and determined:
The amendment could be interpreted to bar giving domestic-violence protections to unmarried couples.
This was the work of:
Maxine Eichner, Reef C. Ivey II Professor of Law
Barbara Fedders, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Holning Lau, Associate Professor of Law
Rachel Blunk, J.D.
Their 27-page report is here (pdf). The professors' final conclusion?
"It is impossible to predict how courts would finally resolve the issues raised by this vague and untested language. However, two things are clear: First, it would take years of expensive litigation to settle the Amendment’s meaning. Second, when the dust clears, [all] unmarried couples would have fewer rights over their most important life decisions than they would have had otherwise."
North Carolina Lawyer's Weekly also looked at the potential unintended consequences of the amendment and arrived at some very disturbing conclusions.
They can attempt to muddy the waters by offering up their dueling "experts" but they can offer no guarantees of how law enforcement and courts will interpret the vague language in the amendment. As the university professors say, that is "impossible to predict."
And we know this is a very valid concern because
it already happened in Ohio.
Ohio's passing of a gay marriage amendment ban in 2004 threw the state's domestic violence laws into a more than two year period of chaos. During that time at least 27 men accused of battering their unmarried partners were able to get their charges dismissed or overturned. The dispute ultimately had to go all the way to the state supreme court.
Nancy Neylon, executive director of the Ohio Domestic Violence Network, says, "I know there were instances of people who went back into violent relationships and were battered again and injured again because they had no legal protection."
Reporting on Ohio Supreme Court case in 2007, the Cleveland Plain Dealer asked: "Does law protect only married couples in abuse cases?"
At issue is whether Ohio's 2-year-old Marriage Protection Act and its restricted definition of matrimony limits domestic violence charges to married couples.
[…]
That part forbids the state or local governments from doing anything that gives relationships between unmarried couples "the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage."
Amendment One shares the same sloppy language as the Ohio Amendment. No one knows how courts will interpret the text of Amendment One that says the "only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State."
We can be certain defense attorneys will see an opening to argue that domestic violence laws no longer apply to unmarried couples, and it will be up to courts to decide if they are right.
And there are no guarantees that how it ultimately turned out in the Ohio Supreme Court is how it will turn out in the North Carolina Supreme Court, should it come to that.
No one knows for certain.
The Politics
First rule of politics: You ignore your opponent's attacks if you are winning. The reason you don't respond is you don't want to reinforce your opponent's frame by repeating it, even to debunk it. Response is the last resort.
Thus far, Amendment One's proponents have been dismissive when confronted with the reality that the amendment is overreaching and too broad, and that it takes out too much collateral damage on all North Carolina families and all unmarried couples and single women. Now apparently they feel they have no choice but to address these concerns.
The effect in the state of North Carolina is that proponents are no longer able to argue Amendment One is good for the state. They are now playing defense and focusing their attention on arguing about how likely it is that bad will come out of passing it, and how much bad it will be. They are now playing on opponent's ground and the real facts, when people and media investigate, are not on their side.
And of course, by airing parts of and referencing PAFNC's ad, they are inviting everyone to go watch Consequences for themselves and see for themselves what this young woman has to say about Amendment One. We welcome the scrutiny.
So, the political ramifications of them airing this response ad are great. It shows they are really beginning to sweat. Perhaps the words of Tom Jensen of Public Policy Polling are burning in their ears:
"There is some reason to think a huge upset in two weeks is within the realm of possibility."
And, it's worth noting, PPP's Jensen said this before a single commercial had hit the air.
If the proponents' claims in the response ad are correct, and all the amendment does is ban gay marriage, then why did one of the bill's main proponents in the House—a sponsor, no less—repudiate his own bill on Wednesday? He said, "I will definitely vote against it because I think it goes to far."
What is "too far," Rep. Crawford? Has the sponsor suddenly become a fan of gay marriage?
A little birdie told me that one of the players in a national LGBT rights organization described what the team at Protect ALL NC Families has done so far as "miraculous." (I put it in quotes because that was the word used.)
And another piece of gossip I can relate is the PANCF team has another game-changing ad all queued up ready to knock the "Family Values protectors" back on their socks again, even as they are still reeling from the first act. It will hit the air very, very soon.
If you can spare it, break them off some bread so they can buy more air for it.
What you can do to help defeat Amendment One:
My friend Scottie Thomaston debunks proponent's misleading ad further here.
TPM: "Are Opponents To NC’s Marriage Amendment On The Verge Of An Epic Comeback?"
Talking Points Memo has a report this morning on the surprising developments on the ground in North Carolina.
“The against side has an advantage in terms of tv air time and grassroots momentum and for the first time this week I really believe there’s a chance the amendment could fail,” Tom Jensen, director of PPP, told TPM in an email. “I never would have thought that until now.”
He added: “I think opponents of the amendment should be very encouraged and if they do every little thing they can in the final days to make sure voters are informed the potential for a seismic upset is there.”
The bill's proponents would not speak to TPM, but Protect ALL NC Families' Jeremy Kennedy told them, “What the other side says is that it’s just about marriage and protecting marriage, but what we’ve been saying all along is that it’s about much more than marriage. Why would we be so irresponsible to amend our constitution in a way that would strip families of benefits and domestic violence protections?”
Despite the encouraging developments, Kennedy has tempered his expectations. “We’re still the underdogs in this race,” he said. Still, he takes solace in the outcome of the 2011 “personhood” amendment in Mississippi, where polls continually showed robust support for the measure in the months leading up to the statewide vote. Opponents there made steady inroads and on election day voters overwhelmingly rejected the amendment, which would have made Mississippi the first state to define a fertilized egg as a person. Kennedy believes the debate over Amendment One has followed a similar trajectory.
Momentum
Update: It gets better!