We have arrived at the end of Black History Month, and I tried to post more related to it than in past years. Then, the other day, there was a post on Facebook about two North Carolina Democratic sernators who voted with conservatives to allow elected officials to refuse to offer marriage licenses to same-sex couples. These two guys are African American, and it got me wondering if all the talk of Black History Month just becomes one more way to ignore really paying attention to History.

Now, I can accept (and even respect) that there are religious people who do not approve same-sex marriage. They think their god and their Bible are against it. That’s cool.  I’m fine with staying as far away from your Church as I can get. You can hold whatever theological views you want and practice them yourselves! If your church is opposed to same-sex marriage, no one is going to force you to have same-sex marriages in your church, and most definitely, no one will force you to marry a person of your same sex.

When it comes to the Civil Society however, then things totally change. What elected officials and those whose job it is to do the civil tasks of our localities, states, etc, must treat every person equally, and if you can’t do that, then you need to go get some job where you aren’t required to treat everyone fairly. The answer isn’t to take away the rights of some to get what legally can not be denied to them- a marriage license.

Thurgood Marshall, Brown v Board of Education, Selma, Voting Rights Act– we can name a long list of elements of Black History which speak directly to the issue of trying to use laws and civil government to keep from a group of people that which should be legally available to members of that group. How can anyone with even a passing awareness of Black History not see that, let alone two North Carolina representatives who are only where they are— as elected officials– because of the steps others took in the past, to demand that everyone is treated fairly by our government at every level and especially by clerks, judges, and county officials.

I don’t know anything about these officials and how they serve their constituents on a regular basis. But I can’t believe that if they thought through this rationally, they would have acted differently. Either 1) They voted this way, believing they had to in order to win votes, or 2) they placed their personal beliefs over and above serving the public and acting in accordance with the US Constitution. Either way, these two elected officials have failed.