Straight Hate: The Tar Heel State’s Symbolic Steps

Despite queer identities gaining increased visibility and acceptance in mainstream media and law, North Carolina still isn’t quite sure love is love. Calvita contends that fiscal insecurity and the rise of balanced-budget conservatism misdirects mass hostility toward immigrants as they are perceived as financial burdens on the state. She argues Californians passed Proposition 187 as a symbolic message regardless of potential negative consequences or inability to be enacted. Thus, Californians voted to limit the rights of undocumented immigrants as a way of projecting their discontentment and anger with the current financial situation.

This emotional reasoning is not so different from the recent anti-LGBT measures enacted (and quickly deemed unconstitutional) in North Carolina. With same-sex marriage freedoms being extended across the country, North Carolina proposed Amendment 1 in 2012 to explicitly define marriage as between a man and a woman. North Carolinians found themselves under the attack of a liberal country, and the amendment passed with over 60% of the vote.

As proposition 187 was “a registration of anger rather than a reasoned effort at instrumental policymaking,” so was Amendment 1, and now the same thing can be said about HB2, although it was passed by the General Assembly rather than a referendum (300). These aren’t effective or well-thought out laws, but they send a salient message of angry homophobia. Additionally, the Amendment 1 passage occurred during our most recent recession. So perhaps as Calavita is arguing, North Carolinians are also taking out their frustration on a marginalized group that is “attacking” family and Christian values rather than focusing on deeper causes like poor education systems and low incomes. Homosexuals may not be abusing the welfare state like immigrants were perceived to be doing, but they are nonetheless attacking a dominant ideology of Christian heteronormativity.