Opinion:   “Constitutional protections for marriage will actually help businesses, because the choice to offer same-sex partner benefits can continue to be based on the businesses’ own decision framework, instead of being mandated by government.



Fact:    This is a dishonest argument, with the ‘mandate’ threatened here contradicting the absence of a mandate noted in the first bullet of this section. Businesses are not 'mandated' to offer benefits to any employee, so they would not be 'mandated' to offer benefits to same-sex spouses if the amendment fails. The suggestion is that the amendment would not prohibit businesses from offering benefits, but that without an amendment businesses would feel pressure to offer them. If the concern is that businesses may feel pressure to offer same-sex benefits, then you must have an equal concern that if the amendment passes, businesses would feel pressure to abide by the amendment and not offer benefits. Either the amendment affects private contracts or it doesn't.

Even if same-sex marriages eventually become legal in North Carolina, businesses would still make their own decisions about benefits, as they do now. But if the argument is simply that businesses should retain the right to discriminate, that argument has not stood well the test of time and Supreme Court rulings. Civil rights are not primarily business issues, and when the two conflict, in America, civil rights usually win.

Interestingly, though this ‘myth’ suggests marriage opponents trust businesses with their own decisions, the National Organization for Marriage has recently spoken out against Starbucks over the company’s support for same-sex unions in Washington state. NOM believes, in other words, that one of the most successful companies in America should ignore its own business and workforce agenda in deciding which public policy to support.

NOM has also said this, "NOM will not stand by and let activist politicians redefine marriage,” revealing a misunderstanding of what politicians are elected to do. If elected officials fail to be ‘activist’, they usually face uphill reelection battles.