To the Editor,

I have been watching the ongoing debate over the proposed Amendment One that North Carolinians will be voting on May 8 and find the arguments by the opponents about all the negative effects this will have on our state to be interesting.

As I understand it, North Carolina is the only Southern state without such a state amendment in its constitution. If passage of this amendment is going to have all of these terrible effects on our state, why are we not seeing story after story in the news about it happening in these other states? Why are opponents not using such stories as actual examples of these effects to bolster their argument? Why is the federal court system not clogged with same-sex couples in other Southern states who are fighting this situation there?

I don’t recall seeing a single report of one of these yet. If we are to believe that what is being said to convince us not to vote for this amendment is so terrible and is going to bring such horrible economic problems to this state, why have all of these businesses not already flocked to North Carolina before this since we were the only state in the South that didn’t already have the amendment? I keep reading about how passage of this amendment will make our state so unattractive to big business since we will be considered so narrow minded. Not only will business avoid us, but people in general will avoid choosing our state as a place to live because of it.

Again, if this is the case, why has there not been massive exits from the other Southern states to ours before this if we were the only one without the amendment in place?

Steve Tyner

Lumberton