Rev. Kathryn Cartledge And Elizabeth Eve, Lesbian Couple Of 30 Years, Arrested After WE DO Campaign Protest For Gay Marriage In North Carolina

Southern Equality's WE DO campaign has unveiled another video (see above) designed to draw attention to the battle for legalizing gay marriage in North Carolina.

Last week the group released a clip of LGBT couples being turned away as they applied to be married at the Register of Deeds in Asheville, North Carolina.

Last Friday the two week awareness raising campaign came to a close, but not before two elderly women were arrested for civil disobedience.

The couple, Rev. Kathryn Cartledge and Elizabeth Eve, who have been together for 30 years, were among the first couples to request a license, reports QNotes.

They returned on Friday and were arrested after they sat on the floor and refused to leave without a license.

“Today's action is about real people saying, I will no longer live as a second-class citizen in my country,” Beach-Ferrara said in a statement following the arrests on Friday. “Kathryn and Elizabeth have devoted their lives to public service and to the values of love and fairness. Today, they stand up not just for their right to be marry, but for all LGBT people who know first hand how harmful these laws are. We are saying, simply, we are equal people. Laws that treat us as unequal must change. We will continue to resist them until they do.”

Residents of North Carolina will vote on a proposed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages -- as well as civil unions -- next May.

Comments

[jjsheets]

03:10 PM on 10/28/2011

This is something that needs to be done federally. If we leave this up to the states it will never happen in some these states.

[Intelligenti Pauca]

01:15 PM on 10/19/2011

Some of the arguments that are being used today to try & deny homosexuals the equality they deserve, are very similar to arguments used a few decades ago to try & halt interracial marriage.

From Peggy Pascoe's book "What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America":

"When societies decide who can and who can't legally marry, they determine who is and isn't really a part of the family. These inclusions and exclusions take place at such an intimate level that they shape what seems natural and, in turn, what is stigmatized as unnatural."

"From the 1860s through the 1960s, the American legal system elevated the notion that interracial marriage was unnatural to commonsense status and made it the law of the land. During this period, miscegenation law channeled property, propriety, personal choice, and legitimate procreation into one very particular kind of monogamous marital pair: couples that were made of up one White man and one White woman, whose sameness of race was required by law and whose difference in sex was taken entirely for granted. The more Whites believe that interracial marriage was unnatural, the more they assumed that the marriage of one White man to one White woman was the only kind of marriage worthy of the name - and the more they saw their own marriages as the fortunate result of individual romantic preference rather than the obligatory outcome of a legal system steeped in gendered assumptions about race and heterosexuality."

[Intelligenti Pauca]

01:36 PM on 10/19/2011

Cont.

Contrast this with Bryan Fischer, the host of the daily 'Focal Point' radio talk program on AFR Talk, a division of the American Family Association, and his opposition to the Prop8 ruling:

"Perhaps the most ridiculous thing about Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling in the Prop. 8 case is that he claimed to give homosexuals something they in fact already have: full marriage equality."

"What they want is not equal rights, but special rights. They want a special exemption carved out for them so that their sexually aberrant relationships can be recognized as marriages, an exemption we don't grant to folks who want to marry a son or a daughter, or a mother or a father, an uncle or an aunt, or a child."

"So when we say two homosexuals cannot marry, we're not depriving them of marital rights any more than when we say the same thing to a pedophile. A pedophile has the same right to marry that every homosexual does — the right to marry a non-relative adult member of the opposite sex."

"So when someone bloviates to you about how homosexuals don't have marriage equality, don't let them get away with it. It's time for us in the pro-family movement to stop being weenies about this. We, not they, are the voices of justice, fairness and rationality here."

[Razpooten]

11:56 AM on 10/19/2011

We people of every gender, of every race and creed should do everything possible to support Rev. Cartledge and Elizabeth Eve and "WE DO" - Boycott anything that comes out of North Carolina or do what ever it takes to send the message that marginalizing and stigmatizing any segment of our society based on religios prejudices is not acceptable.

[StevenKeirstead]

10:06 AM on 10/19/2011

Civil disobedience will often get you arrested for trespassing. Though it may be illegal to refuse to leave a public office at closing time, this action was laudable and may help to shame NC's governments into doing the right thing.

[American in Taipei]

05:48 PM on 10/19/2011

Not likely. Speaking as someone who interned in state government here, the representatives are set in their ways and vote party-line. So the solution for gay rights in NC is to elect Democrats. They may not bring us more progress but at least they won't push us back.

[psnyder325]

10:04 AM on 10/19/2011

Occupy ALL marriage license offices everywhere they discriminate against gays and lesbians! A wildcat strike wouldn't hurt, either. Take to the streets until your rights are protected. The fight for legalization of gay and lesbian marriage is a civil rights fight for all of us! I'm straight, and I fully support gay and lesbian marriage. People should not be told they can't marry the one they love. It is immoral and dead wrong.

[norepublicanleftbehind]

01:41 AM on 10/19/2011

Just appalling. Think about arresting your parents. Shame on NC.

[truth be told again]

10:26 PM on 10/18/2011

Back of the bus. The floor of City Halls. Peaceful protest gets you arrested in the Land of the "Free".

Shame on North Carolina. Shame on America.

Let's bring back LIBERTY and JUSTICE for ALL again. I miss it.

[outloud]

03:24 PM on 10/18/2011

If Obama doesn't get rid of DOMA fairly quickly, I doubt the chances for repeal will get better after the election.
It's not a sure thing that he will be the candidate or get reelected.

[Contact1972]

12:53 PM on 10/18/2011

Another reason to push for getting rid of DOMA. It is the only way GLBT all over the country will be alloed to marry Federally. If we leave it to states like Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, North Carolina etc, GLBT tax paying citizens will still be second class ones in 50 years.

[Ioan Lightoller]

12:32 PM on 10/18/2011

You go, ladies! Maybe your example will melt some hard hearts down there in NC. I hope so.

[Goddess Athena]

12:17 PM on 10/18/2011

Civil disobedience at it's best! I am sure this was a well thought out decision by these brave women. Maybe now more people will start to listen.

[Contact1972]

12:48 PM on 10/18/2011

Would be interesting to see what would happen if scores of GLBT couples did this every day.

[Goddess Athena]

03:29 PM on 10/18/2011

I think it would also help to have as much heterosexual support as possible. Personally I would love to see heterosexual couples protesting as well, refusing to leave until a marriage license is granted to every couple who wants to be married, regardless of sexual preference.

[truth be told again]

10:32 PM on 10/18/2011

This is very close to how it happened in Canada. My husband and I went to Toronto City Hall one year and were told, "The City of Toronto would love to issue you a license, and we will even accept your application and hold it in abeyance, until such time as the Provincial Government authorizes us to make the ceremony legal." (It sounded like a 'script', but it was a wonderful affirmation that the City of Toronto was on our side against bigotry.)

The next year, it went coast to coast. from Newfoundland to NovaScotia, to Montreal, to Toronto (again), then on to Manitoba and westward. We taped the news coverage of it all (thank gawd for picture in the picture) and have sent it to LGBT conferences for support and discussion.

Then later that year, it was legalized in Ontario, and less than two years later, country-wide.

So I encourage it.

[lambdin1]

10:39 AM on 10/18/2011

I really think that most people in the "Bible Belt" have an auditory problem. Mostly beacuse there is nothing there for sound to resonate!

[labrat03]

10:08 AM on 10/18/2011

The West and East Coast should secede from the middle and the south, I think we would find that gay marriage, medicare, ending the war and most other progressive views would be passed very quickly. Ok, we can take Iowa with us ;-)

[xmlman]

08:53 AM on 10/18/2011

It's disgusting that a so-called member of "law enforcement" who has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States would slap handcuffs on this two women. A real "man" would refuse such an order.

[norepublicanleftbehind]

01:42 AM on 10/19/2011

Agreed

[LoyalBob]

08:24 AM on 10/18/2011

A very moving campaign. Civil disobedience may be the tipping point with this issue. One can hope that the walls fall quickly and equality is achieved soon.