Jun 15, 2015
Leading SB2 Proponent Reveals True Motives Behind Law
Raleigh, N.C. (June 15, 2015) – More evidence emerged last week that North Carolina’s new religious refusal law, allowing public officials to decline to perform certain marriage-related services, specifically targets the very relationships of the state's same-sex couples.
Balking at the notion that the measure could be used to prevent magistrates from serving interracial and interfaith couples, Tami Fitzgerald, a paid conservative lobbyist and leading proponent of Senate Bill 2, now the magistrates recusal law, told WRAL on Friday that the measure is justified because a same-sex relationship “by its very nature and design is not right.”
From WRAL.com: “This bill was to allow magistrates and registers of deeds to exercise their religious beliefs about marriage," Fitzgerald said. She added, "Creating a relationship that by its very nature and design is not right is something that people of religious faith ought to have the right to object to and to decline."
Fitzgerald, who also leads the so-called NC Values Coalition, the organization that led the fight against marriage equality in North Carolina, is no stranger to vitriolic anti-LGBT rhetoric.
In July 2014, Fitzgerald brazenly told conservative radio host Steve Noble that gay and lesbian people in relationships “are defying what they were created to be.”
Chris Sgro, executive director of Equality NC, North Carolina’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) advocacy organization, was quick to respond to Fitzgerald’s latest inflammatory comments, calling them an extreme repudiation of true North Carolina values.
"As support for the freedom to marry soars in North Carolina, it becomes clear that Ms. Fitzgerald’s comments and the laws that stem from them are not only hateful and extreme, but run counter to what we see everyday as true North Carolina values: the importance of family and supporting our neighbors, doing a good job, and treating everyone fairly."
Sgro added, "Fitzgerald and her organization have time and time again been on the losing side of moral and legal history, and we join with the majority of North Carolinians who refuse see her as an authority on either."
Ftizgerald's comments come amid news this month of record-high support for same-sex marriage in North Carolina as well as a highly-anticipated Supreme Court ruling that could bring a national resolution on the issue of marriage equality.