Madison County

Town and Country

On North Carolina’s Amendment One, the fault line was not racial—it was urban-rural.

(Flickr/mediacutts)

In the week since North Carolina voters adopted a constitutional amendment banning recognition of any "domestic legal union" other than heterosexual marriage, a consensus has formed among journalists about African-American complicity. According to this narrative, black voters let their Protestant traditionalism trump any sense of fairness toward lesbians and gay men—and became the critical voting bloc that gave Amendment 1 its landslide victory.