N.C. GOP leader says no future for bill banning gay marriage
RALEIGH, N.C. -- One of North Carolina’s leading Republican politicians says there will never be a hearing for proposed legislation aimed at countering the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage.
House Speaker Tim Moore of Kings Mountain said in a statement Wednesday that the bill introduced this week won’t be considered because the nation’s highest court “has firmly ruled on the issue.”
The “Uphold Historical Marriage Act” says the U.S. Supreme Court over stepped its “constitutional bounds” when in 2015 it struck down what was known as Amendment One, CBS affiliate WNCN reports. In May 2012, more than 60 percent of those who cast a ballot voted in favor of Amendment One, which prohibited North Carolina from recognizing or performing same-sex marriages or civil unions.
Republican Reps. Larry Pittman of Concord, Michael Speciale of New Bern and Carl Ford of China Grove say the decision effectively voided an amendment to North Carolina’s constitution forbidding same-sex marriage that voters approved three years earlier.
The bill says the Supreme Court not only overstepped their power in North Carolina but also overstepped the “the decree of Almighty God that ‘a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become 22 one flesh (Genesis 2:24, ESV),” WNCN reports.
Moore said in his statement that, “There are strong constitutional concerns with this legislation given that the U.S. Supreme Court has firmly ruled on the issue, therefore House Bill 780 will be referred to the House Rules Committee and will not be heard.”
HB780 would have made the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage void in North Carolina. The bill states marriages between persons of the same gender would not be valid, whether conducted inside or outside of the state.
Speciale said he was only looking to return North Carolina state law to what it was before the U.S. Supreme Court got involved.