Emphasis from Protect ALL NC Families' original release:



NC NAACP Rolls Out Statewide Media Campaign to

Expose the Truth About the Discriminatory Amendment One

This week, in the face of an extreme rightwing attack on minorities and the poor, the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP is rolling out a major media campaign to make clear the facts and constitutional dangers facing all North Carolinians through the discriminatory Amendment One.

Through ads in African-American newspapers, radio spots across the state, mailers, and robocalls to tens of thousands North Carolina voters, and brochures distributed to over fifty counties through grassroots NAACP branch leadership, the public education campaign is already resonating with everyday North Carolinians.

"The polls and the politicians are asking the wrong questions on this discriminatory amendment, hatched in the backrooms of the extremist, rightwing think-tanks," said Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President of the North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP. "Our message is consistent: A vote on the same sex marriage amendment has nothing to do with your personal and religious opinion on same sex marriage but everything to do with whether or not you believe discrimination should be codified and legalized constitutionally. We should never seek to codify or vote discrimination into the very heart and framework of our Constitution."

Dr. Barber continued, "The real insult to the Civil Rights Movement is that the same regressive, ultra-conservative Tea Party type folks suing to overturn the 1965 Voting Rights Act, re-segregating and robbing our public schools of valuable resources, blocking workers' rights to organize, trying to force us all to get photo ID's to exercise our right to vote and cut back on the time and opportunities to vote, and attempting to repeal the Racial Justice Act, now somehow think the sons and daughters of the Civil Rights Movement cannot see through their Trojan Horse trick."

Secret documents from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), recently unsealed by the courts, revealed the real strategy behind this amendment. Their 2009 report reads:



'The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks -- two key Democratic constituencies. Find, equip, energize and connect African American spokespeople for marriage; develop a media campaign around their objections to gay marriage as a civil right; provoke the gay marriage base into responding by denouncing these spokesmen and women as bigots. No politician wants to take up and push an issue that splits the base of his party. Fanning the hostility raised in the wake of Prop 8 is key to raising the costs of pushing gay marriage to its advocates ... find attractive young black Democrats to challenge white gay marriage advocates electorally.'"[1]

The NAACP's position on any constitutional amendment that limits rights has been consistent for over 20 years, when other campaigns of this kind were proposed. For 103 years the NAACP's mission has always been to "ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons." The NC NAACP has always opposed any custom, tradition, practice, law or constitutional amendment that denies any rights, privileges, or opportunities to any person which can legally be extended to others.

The radio spots, already running across the state, will be available at www.naacpnc.org later this afternoon.

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Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization. Its members throughout the United States and the world are the premier advocates for civil rights in their communities, conducting voter mobilization and monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private sectors.