Facebook Co-Founder Challenges Christianists in North Carolina

Today as we remember those who dies because of religious intolerance and extremism, the American Taliban who share an anti-liberty mind set like Bin Laden's are working to write discrimination and religious based intolerance into the North Carolina constitution. Make no mistake, i hold open contempt for such people who want special rights for themselves and seek to make a mockery of the promise of religious freedom contained in the United States Constitution. Now, Facebook co-founder and North Carolina native Chris Hughes (at left) has released an "Open Letter to the North Carolina General Assembly," publicly opposing North Carolina's proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partner benefits. In his statement, now being circulated to state lawmakers, Hughes writes in part "this amendment is bad for business, bad for the perception of my home state on the national stage, and a far cry from job-creating legislation that North Carolina lawmakers should be focused on." Here are highlights from the letter via Equality North Carolina:

I’m writing today to express my deep concern and fervent opposition to the proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment, SB106/HB777. As the co-founder of Facebook, I have some experience with the challenges of attracting the kind of driven, dynamic and diverse employees it takes to build a fledgling start-up into a full- fledged economic success story.

Companies like Facebook, Google and Apple are the future of our global economy. But the proposed anti-gay constitutional amendment signals to these and other major employers, as well as their mobile, educated employees, that North Carolina does not welcome the diverse workforce that any state needs to compete in the international marketplace.

But the negative business impact is far from the only harm of this amendment. Growing up in a conservative atmosphere in Hickory, North Carolina, I felt first-hand the stigma of being different in a Southern state—a feeling that made it clear to me that I was not welcome in North Carolina.

The proposed discriminatory legislation will only perpetuate this stigma for a new generation of creative, talented youth, uninterested in second-class citizenship in a state they call home. Gay and lesbian North Carolinians work hard, contribute to society, and want to protect their families like everyone else. Their families deserve the same respect and the same treatment as everyone else, and they should not be exposed to the derogatory and harmful anti-gay rhetoric that inevitability accompanies these kinds of campaigns. North Carolina deserves better than that.