By Tom Curry, msnbc.com National Affairs Writer
Updated at 9:38pm ET North Carolina voters Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution which limits marriage to traditional one man-one woman marriages.
With half the precincts reporting, the amendment was winning in a landslide, with 60 percent of the vote.
One noteworthy pattern was that some majority black counties which had strongly backed President Obama in 2008 just as strongly supported the proposed amendment on Tuesday.
For example, Hertford County, with a 60 percent black population, voted for Obama with 70 percent in 2008 and on Tuesday 70 percent of its voters backed the constitutional amendment defining marriage.
Gerry Broome / AP
Signs in support of and against the Constitutional Marriage Amendment greet voters May 8 at a polling location at Leesville Road Middle School in Raleigh, N.C.
The amendment says: “Marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this State.” In effect, it would bar the state from giving legal recognition to civil unions between same-sex couples.
Related: Is Obama's gay marriage stance all about suburban voters?
Under North Carolina law, same-sex marriages are already banned.
And opponents of the constitutional amendment did not make the argument that defeating it was a prelude to changing the law so that same-sex couples could legally marry in North Carolina.
“This is not a conversation about a possible change of law down the road,” said Paul Guequierre, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, the main group rallying opposition to the amendment, on Monday.
By approving the amendment, North Carolina joins 28 other states that have state constitutional provisions limit marriage to man-woman unions.
On Monday Peter Sprigg, the senior fellow for policy studies at the conservative Family Research Council in Washington said, “Marriage remains an essential social institution which unites men and women to provide for the reproduction of the human race and to provide mothers and fathers for children. We trust that the voters of North Carolina will recognize and protect this vital public purpose of marriage."
But President Barack Obama had opposed the amendment. "While the president does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples," Cameron French, Obama's North Carolina campaign spokesman, said in March.
A Gallup Poll released Tuesday showed the American people split on the same-sex marriage question: 50 percent think marriages between same-sex couples should be recognized by the law as valid, but 48 percent think they should not be recognized as legal. Among Democrats, 65 percent say same-sex marriages should be recognized by the law as valid, but among only about one in five Republicans hold that view. Among independents, 57 percent think sex marriages should be legally recognized.
Thirty-eight states have prohibitions of same-sex marriage in their laws. Six states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex marriages.
