This is very, very, very late in the game to consider, but does Charlotte, North Carolina deserve to host the 2012 Democratic National Convention if the state passes a proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions?
Logistically, it is past the point of no return to suggest that the 2012 DNC be moved to another host city. And it is destructively punitive to hold the city of Charlotte responsible for the bigotry of an entire state, but how can the Democratic Party reward such deplorable electoral behavior?
Consider the statistic revealed today via Peter Wallsten and Dan Eggen: "About one in six of Obama's top campaign 'bundlers' are gay, according to a Washington Post review of donor lists."
If the election in North Carolina goes according to the polling, Democrats are now asking these same 'bundlers' to pump money into the economy of a state diametrically opposed to their individual rights.
Andrew Sullivan explains what this really means:
"It reveals that the anti-marriage equality peeps are not simply anti-marriage. They are against any civil recognition of gay couples' commitment, responsibility and equality. The Amendment today would ban any relationship rights whatever to gay couples in the state. No domestic partnerships, no civil unions - nada. It renders spouses strangers at hospitals, it ensures no legal stability for shared homes or shared children. It is in many ways a simple declaration that gay relationships are anathema to the people of North Carolina. That's what drives the anti-marriage equality movement: the removal of gay people from full family life."
Again, the timing of such a decision is the greatest obstacle to such a move, but there is some precedent.
Super Bowl XXVII was originally scheduled to be played at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Arizona. But in 1990, after Arizona voters rejected a ballot initiative to create a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day holiday, the NFL voted to yank Super Bowl XXVII from Arizona under pressure from civil rights groups and from the NFL Players' Association. The Super Bowl was instead held in the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.
Perhaps Atlanta or New York City could lay out a real quick welcome mat.
