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CHARLOTTE -- On the day he was elected to lead the state's Baptist convention, the Rev. Mark Harris fielded a threatening voice mail that gave him a quick glimpse of the approaching battle over same-sex marriage in North Carolina.

Harris didn't want to describe the entire message, only the essence: He needed to stop "spewing hatred" toward homosexuals and their families.

In November, Harris, senior minister at uptown Charlotte's First Baptist Church, was elected to a yearlong term as president of the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina, representing 4,300 N.C. Baptist churches and their 1.3 million members.

In that capacity, he is sure to be a point man in the campaign for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages. The amendment, on the May 8 primary ballot, would restrict the state's recognition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman. It would also place more restrictions on civil unions and domestic partnerships and make it more difficult for future legislators to rescind.

He understands the debate will be emotional on both sides.

"But I hope we can express our positions -- keep the conversation to the facts and our principles -- and do it in a civil way," Harris, 45, said. "It doesn't mean I'm going to change someone else's position or they're going to change mine.

"But in America, we all ought to be able to express ourselves without things getting out of hand."

Growing up in Winston-Salem, Harris always wanted to be a lawyer.

But the pull to the pulpit became too strong in 1987. Harris was 21 then, freshly graduated from Appalachian State University, admitted to Campbell University's law school and months from marrying Beth Bates, his college girlfriend.

Yet two weeks before their wedding, he told Beth: "I know you think you're marrying an attorney. But the truth is: God is working in my heart. I've got to work in the ministry."

She'd seen "something stirring inside" him when he worked as a youth minister during summers in college. She urged him to pursue the tug.

So Harris continued to work as a youth minister, got married in June 1987, and that December was hired by Center Grove Baptist, a small church in Clemmons near Winston-Salem.

When he took over, 50 members regularly attended Sunday school classes; 60 members took in Harris' sermons, he said.

By 1999, when the Harrises left for an Augusta, Ga., church with their three young children, Center Grove's Sunday school attendance was up to 700. And about 900 congregants attended his sermons in a new $6 million church, built on 38 acres Center Grove had bought near the old sanctuary, Harris said.

They stayed in Augusta until 2005, when Harris was hired to co-pastor First Baptist's congregation in Charlotte with its longtime pastor, the Rev. Charles Page. Page died months later of cancer.

Along the way, Harris earned a master's of divinity and doctor of ministry degrees at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest near Raleigh.

As the battle over same-sex marriage looms, Harris said, he will urge pastors and congregations to get engaged and vote for the "Marriage Amendment." He'll also push for other "family-friendly" issues.

"Over the next several months, I am going to stress that this is an opportunity for the church to celebrate marriage and its biblical foundation -- rather than talking about something we're against," he said.

"From a biblical position, all I can do is state my position: I believe that homosexuality is a sin ... That said, I don't believe that that position is at the heart of this amendment. If homosexuals choose to maintain a relationship and live together, that's their business. I don't believe people should be discriminated against."

Same-sex marriages, he said, aren't good for children.

"I just believe that marriage between a man and a woman is ideal," he said. "It is such a unique union, and it is absolutely essential to the future of humanity."

The Rev. Nancy Kraft, pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, doesn't know Harris but knows enough about the amendment to speak out against it. She, too, hopes the debate will be civil.

Her objection, she said, isn't based on religion. "I just think it's inappropriate as a constitutional amendment," Kraft said. "It's political grandstanding on the part of people who are anti-gay."

She said the amendment would discriminate against gay people. "I hope people really look at this as a broader issue and don't think they're voting on gay marriage," she said. "There is no rational way you can justify putting discrimination into our constitution.

"It'd be an embarrassment for North Carolina -- which I view as a progressive state."

North Carolina is the last Southern state to take up the issue of a constitutional amendment. The state already has a statute banning same-sex marriage.

"But we've seen those statutes set aside by activist judges in other states," Harris said. "They won't be able to set aside a constitutional amendment."