NC: right wing poll misleads about content of anti-LGBT constitutional amendment

From EqualityNC, news that should surprise few - the right wing machine is trying to deflect and deceive in interpreting the effort to enshrine bigotry in the state constitution:

A right-wing think tank today released a new poll that uses misleading language to falsely inflate support for Senate Bill 106, the proposed anti-LGBT constitutional amendment. According to the poll by the Civitas Institute, a purported "large majority" of North Carolina voters support holding a vote to rewrite our state constitution and define marriage as only between a man and a woman. However, the poll carefully avoids telling voters that this type of discriminatory revision to our state's most fundamental document would also ban civll union and domestic partnership, recognition which most North Carolina voters clearly support.

The Civitas Institute says it polled 600 general election voters in North Carolina using the following question:

"The North Carolina legislature is considering a bill that would allow North Carolina voters to vote on amending the state constitution to say marriage is only between a man and a woman. Do you support or oppose allowing North Carolina voters to vote on this constitutional amendment?"

This deceiving query neglects many of the amendment's most egregious harms, including much of what makes this proposed constitutional revision the most extreme version of an anti-LGBT amendment, including:

• not only limiting marriage to opposite sex couples, as state
  statute already does, but also prohibiting any other form of relationship
  recognition, such as civil union or domestic partnership--forms of recognition that a majority of North Carolinians clearly support;
  
• potentially taking away private benefits such as health insurance for LGBT couples, unmarried opposite-sex couples, and their children and challenging private contracts between couples; and
  
• writing bigotry and discrimination into our state's founding document, and, with the same stroke, removing the rights and responsibilities that are currently available to some couples.

"Besides misleading voters, the very premise of this Civitas poll is wrong," said Ian Palmquist, Equality North Carolina's Executive Director. "It is always wrong to put the civil rights of a minority up for a popular vote. The reason we have a constitution is to protect the rights of all citizens, not to take them away."

Click here for more information about the proposed anti-LGBT constitutional amendment
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