On October 9, 2013, Scott and Ron, residents of Charlotte, North Carolina, will request a marriage license at the Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds’ office as the WE DO Campaign continues to grow across North Carolina.
You can send Scott and Ron a message of support here and read their letter to the Mecklenburg County Register of Deeds below.
Dear Honorable David Granberry,
My partner Ron and I have been residents of Mecklenburg County for over 18 years and we consider Charlotte our home. We met here not long after we both moved here independently and have been in a committed relationship for over 16 of those 18 years. I am writing to you today to request that you grant us a marriage license to have our relationship recognized by the state of North Carolina. We plan to come to your office to make this request in person onWednesday, October 9th at 11:00 AM.
I am from Boston and Ron is from Quincy, Illinois. We both love living in Charlotte and we plan to spend the rest of our lives here. We could be legally married in Massachusetts, or have a civil union in Illinois, but our goal has always been to get married in North Carolina where we would be surrounded by our friends and family who know us and treat us as any other legally married couple they know. By all reasonable measures, this is how we should be treated.
We recognize that the law of North Carolina currently prohibits same-sex marriage, but we believe this law is unconstitutional and we hope you do as well. You may already be familiar with a recent development in Pennsylvania in which a Register of Wills, Mr. Bruce Hanes, issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples in his county. Pennsylvania has a ban similar to North Carolina’s, but Mr. Hanes believes it to be in violation of basic principles of the state and federal constitutions and thus, an unjust law. (More information is available here: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Who-is-D-Bruce-Hanes-217636121.html).Courageous elected officials took similar positions in California and New York prior to marriage laws changing in those states.
Ron and I hope that you will follow in Mr. Hanes’ footsteps and grant us the license we wish for and that we truly believe we deserve.
We look forward to meeting with you on October 9th.
Sincerely,
Scott W. Bishop
