Mitchell Gold marries in Iowa, comes home to Conover

Mitchell Gold grew up thinking he would never be married.

"When I would look out at society, at my parents and my brother and his girlfriend and people talking about marriage … I never thought that was something I could have," said Gold, the openly gay cofounder of Taylorsville's Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams home furnishings brand.

Last month in Iowa, however, Gold married his partner of three years, Timothy Scofield.

The two held the ceremony in Des Moines because Iowa is one of the five states, along with Washington, D.C., that recognizes same-sex marriages. They also appreciated the symbolism of Iowa as part of the nation's heartland, as well as the ruling of district court judge Robert Hanson, which led the Iowa Supreme court to permit same-sex marriages.

Judge Hanson performed the ceremony at the Des Moines Art Center on June 19.

"Tim and Mitchell hope that very soon, committed, loving couples who happen to be gay will be able to marry in their own states and have their marriages recognized by their federal government," said a wedding announcement from the couple.

The two will live in Conover. Regardless of the Iowa wedding, North Carolina does not recognize same-sex marriages and will not automatically give Gold and Scofield the rights most married couple have.

Those include next-of-kin status for hospital visits and medical decisions, automatic inheritance and the ability to hold joint insurance policies or jointly file taxes.

Instead, Gold said the couple had to spend thousands of dollars in legal fees to ensure rights such as one of them being able to visit the other in the event of an emergency-room stay.

Arguments against same-sex marriage, which Gold prefers to call marriage equality, rarely center on rights.

Instead, opponents often base their positions on the moral argument.

State Sen. Jim Jacumin represents Burke and Caldwell counties. He co-sponsored two recent bills proposing that North Carolina voters decide whether to add a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

Should same-sex marriage be allowed, "all of a sudden the building block of the family is destroyed," Jacumin said.

He thinks the measure would lead to more same-sex marriages and more homosexuals in the state, and says that would signal the end of the family since only a man and a woman can reproduce.

Gold thinks allowing people who love each other to marry can only strengthen the institution of marriage. That way, more people see more couples loving and taking care of each other.

The argument that love could be bad for the family, he said, is sometimes rooted in mean spiritedness and sometimes in misunderstanding. Either way, he thinks the attitude is damaging for everyone concerned, whether they are lawmakers who reject constituent rights or families who too often shun children over the issue of sexual orientation.

"I feel sad for the people who live under the shroud of bigotry because there's so much good love out there," he said.

North Carolina remains the only Southeastern state without a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Two bills to let voters decide on a state constitutional amendment to that effect have failed to make it out of the State House and Senate committees in the last year.

Rep. Mark Hilton, a Republican who represents Catawba County, sponsored the most recent Defense of Marriage bill in the State House.

State law already says North Carolina will not recognize same-sex marriage, but Hilton said the lack of a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage leaves the state vulnerable to court challenges on the issue.
Gold is not angry about the existing amendments or the one proposed in North Carolina.

"I feel disappointment," he said. "Those are the same states that were vehemently opposed to interracial marriage and we have seen that the sky is not falling in because of interracial marriage. … We've been down this road before and they're going to be on the wrong side of history."

Gold, who grew up in Trenton, N.J., also counts himself as a North Carolina ambassador. He says the state has plenty of fair-minded residents.

"This is not the Jesse Helms North Carolina anymore," he said.