WINSTON-SALEM - Recently a woman reported that she was brutally raped at her home in Charlotte. Now an anti-gay marriage amendment has been introduced in the state Senate. You may wonder what the two have to do with each other. I believe they are directly related. You see, the woman, who chose not to disclose her identity to the one local TV station, WBTV, that covered the crime, said she was a lesbian, and that while brutalizing her, her attacker made it clear that he was raping her because she was a lesbian.

The crimes committed against gay people are too numerous to be counted. And in North Carolina we don't try to count them, because crimes committed on account of a victim's sexual orientation are not classified as "hate crimes" under state law. But make no mistake, gay people are targets. The violence is real and it is systematic.

Efforts to amend the state constitution to preclude forever a same-sex couple from marrying are but one component of that system of violence. Such efforts, regardless of their sponsors' intention, have the effect of branding gay North Carolinians as the "other," as something less than equal.

Imagine systematically denigrating a segment of the population and then believing that the consequences stop with the law on the books, without any real-world ramifications. When proponents of a marriage amendment brand certain North Carolinians as targets for special disadvantage, other people believe them, and gay people, like the woman in Charlotte, are raped -- or worse.

Last semester, I taught the close friend of a young man named Sean Kennedy. My student showed me home videos of his friend Sean dancing in his socks, pretending to skate over the slick linoleum flooring of his mother's kitchen, the way many of us did as kids.

Sean is dead. In May 2007, he was assaulted in Greenville, S.C., by a young man who called him "faggot" while punching him so hard that he broke every bone in Sean's face. Sean fell to the pavement; the impact caused his brain to separate from his brain stem.

Shortly after driving away, Sean's killer left a message on the cell phone of one of Sean's friends: "Tell your faggot friend that when he wakes up he owes me $500 for my broken hand."

Or consider Scotty Joe Weaver, the out gay teen in rural Alabama who was tied up, tortured and partially decapitated before his killers set his body on fire. Or there is the case of Danny Overstreet, a gay man murdered in Roanoke, Va., by an assailant who was allegedly driven to murder by the trauma he suffered by simply having the last name "Gay." Six others were seriously injured in his shooting spree.

Studies show that in states, particularly in our neighboring Southern states, where anti-gay marriage amendments are in place, violence against gay people, and especially gay youth, is escalating at alarming rates.

The recent marriage equality ruling by the California Supreme Court -- even though the same result is inconceivable in North Carolina -- will likely stoke the amendment fires here even more. Certainly, the opportunity the ruling affords some people to further vilify gay North Carolinians will not be passed up.

The anti-marriage amendment was introduced on May 14 by Sen. Jim Forrester, R-Gaston, whose wife recently wrote that gay people in North Carolina are "seeking to ... rob our children of their innocence."

Reading those words, I thought of my friend, shot at on the streets of Roanoke, who has now been with his partner for 13 years; neither of them is interested in robbing anyone of his innocence. I thought of Sean Kennedy, Gwen Araujo, Michael Sandy, Brandon Teena. Doesn't anybody care about their innocence?

I thought of school-aged gay youth in this country who commit suicide at a reported rate of one youth every six hours because of the unrelenting harassment they face in schools and, sadly, sometimes even at home.

Some in our state Senate recently opposed a bill passed in the House that would protect gay youth and youth perceived to be gay from bullying and harassment on that account. I can only assume that the opponents believe these youths deserve to be beaten, cut, urinated on and set on fire as gay youth I have known and counseled have been. Do these kids also deserve death?

It's a hard truth, but when you recognize that marriage amendments, and the dehumanizing culture of which they are a part, break not only hearts but also bones, you understand what really is at stake. I believe that the people of North Carolina do not want brutality for brutality's sake. And if they look at it closely, they will recognize North Carolina's proposed anti-marriage amendment as part of a culture of brutality that inevitably ends in death.

(Shannon Gilreath is a law professor at Wake Forest University, where he teaches courses on law and sexuality and law and religion. He is the author of "Sexual Politics: The Gay Person in America Today" and "Sexual Identity Law in Context.")

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