I’m dumbfounded how Iowa could be the first Midwest state to approve same-sex marriages, but I’m excited that it happened! I guess Iowa is more progressive than I thought.
From the NYT:
Iowa became the first state in the Midwest to approve same-sex marriage on Friday, after the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously decided that a 1998 law limiting marriage to a man and a woman was unconstitutional.
The decision was the culmination of a four-year legal battle that began in the lower courts. The Supreme Court said same-sex marriages could begin in Iowa in as soon as 21 days.
I’ll be surprised if this isn’t legal in most states in a decade.
Presumably the Bible bashers can take this issue to the US Supreme Court and appeal again though? I bet they will.
I’ll never understand the dichotomy of Christianity in the US. For a predominantly Christian nation, “Though shalt not worship false idols” seems to have fallen by the wayside – flag worship is ramapant. And yet, despite the constitution being treated almost as holy writ, people who will argue their right to own guns on the basis that the constitution says that they can will totally ignore it on matters of religion. Bizzare.
Oh, and FURSTIES!
As explained in the decision itself, Iowa has a history of extending equal protection to new groups before the rest of the country does, including beating Brown v Board of Education by 85 years. It helps that the people who wrote the Iowa constitution stated pretty explicitly that they wrote the constitution the way they did so that equal protection would be extended to more people than they could have imagined at the time they wrote it.
The links below show how simply but eloquently the Supreme Court deconstructed the arguments against civil unions.
http://www.judicial.state.ia.us/wfData/files/Varnum/40209Varnumsummary.pdf
http://lawdork.wordpress.com/2009/04/03/our-liberties-we-prize-and-our-rights-we-will-maintain/
It’s a sign. Of the end.
This is really good news for all of us. I’ve been happy all day!
I was raised in Iowa. It has become surprisingly progressive in the last decade. We should also remember, the Iowa was the first victory for Obama in the primary. This was very significant because of the demographic make-up of Iowa.
Young people in Iowa grow up waiting for an opportunity to leave because of the lack of anything other than farming to look forward to when they get older. That trend is changing. Many high-tech jobs and companies are moving to Des Moines and surrounding areas as the quality of life is very high. The state is relatively crime free.
There are areas teeming with Evangelicals, but they are in the very rural areas. It has taken a generation or two to change, but change it has.
I was still working on my annoyance of Connecticut having beat my state to it, and then Iowa of all places…grr.
This is good news, of course. :)
I’m glad, but it will be one legal appeal after another for a while and the Mormon/Catholic union of hell will probably do their best to bring it down just as they did in Cali.
I will NEVER understand why this should even be an issue. How does one person marrying another, regardless of sex, orientation, color, etc., effect those who profess to believe in “traditional” unions? They can still get married and live their ignorant lives the way they want to.
Yayyy!
Maybe it’s time you rethink what you thought about Iowa. Or at least acknowledge all the ‘I-states’ aren’t the same. We aren’t scratching our heads wondering how this happened. We’ve been watching it rationally move through the courts for the past few years.
Iowa has always been socially progressive:
“Iowa has always been a leader in the area of civil rights. In 1839, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected slavery in a decision that found that a slave named Ralph became free when he stepped on Iowa soil, 26 years before the end of the Civil War decided the issue.
In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated “separate but equal” schools had no place in Iowa, 85 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.
In 1873, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against racial discrimination in public accommodations, 91 years before the U.S. Supreme Court reached the same decision.
In 1869, Iowa became the first state in the union to admit women to the practice of law.”
And yes…. it’s a VERY good thing.
People I meet from Iowa just always seem to have a lot of good sense. That’s a trait hard to come by in some circles these days…
I hope that California follows in Iowa’s footsteps. I personally know people that were able to get married under state law, just to have thier civil unions threatened to be taken away. This is a civil rights movement, and the U.S., or State governments should not interfere, under seperation of church and state.
Even though I don’t approve of gay marriage personally as a Christian, I do think prohibiting it is unconstitutional. It’s just another way to show prejudice, honestly. Since there are laws making equal rights for African-Americans and women, I guess society just had to find someone else to pick on. Even when equal rights for gays are established (which I’m sure they will be very soon), there will be yet another minority fighting for rights. It has always been that way and always will be.
The only reason I can see for people to oppose gay marriage, besides personal beliefs or just a blanket prejudice, is that the constitiution was *supposedly* originally based on Christian beliefs (even though there were no laws agains racial or sexual discrimination). But our forefathers left plenty of constitutional leneage because they knew that our government would only be successful if it could be changed as America changed. I mean, it’s not like they knew we’d end up legalizing gay marriage, but they knew America would only work if its citizens could feel equal.
So, legalizing gay marriage is essential for the progress of society. So will many other things be essential for America’s survival, things we can’t even imagine today. Just like our forefathers couldn’t have imagine things that are going on today. But that does’t mean it’s morally right (once again, my personal belief, not imposing it on anyone).
I definetely don’t consider America a Christian nation. Lol. I’ve actually read the constitution and I have studied the biographies of those who composed it. But I don’t see how the constitution would dissuade one of it being based on Christian principles. But then again, that’s just me.
I was so surprised when I heard this. Iowa, of all places!
I’m kind of ashamed to be Californian.
I blogged about this on Friday too.
Thrilled to see this decision. I can only hope more state follow.
It’s times like these when I think a strong federal state is a good thing. In Canada this was taken up nationally and solved by a ridiculously narrow margin, but now it’s a law nationwide. Gay couples married in BC get their rights recognized in every province.
Hopefully we’re about to see the sort of cascade that preceded national civil rights legislation. With several states instituting equal marriage just before it becomes national.
I’m also surprised that Iowa did this, and I’ve lived here all of my life!
I live in rural southern Iowa, which I’m guessing is a bit more conservative overall than the rest of the state. There’s a big rally going on right now in a town fairly close to where I live against the decision. People there are pissed.
I know that Iowa City is extremely liberal, and Des Moines isn’t bad, either… but around here where I live, people are livid over this.
Everytime I hear someone complain, it puts a huge smile on my face. :)
I’m choosing to believe that you mean a sign of the end of xenophobic, hatefull bigotry by people who claim moral superiority whilst at the same time spewing hateful, immoral filth. If you don’t mean that, then you’re an idiot.
Or maybe she’s a despotic christian controller of others’ lives who think that separation of church and state should only go one way: the state shouldn’t mess with the church, but the church has every right to tyrannically and despotically control the state with its beliefs forced on others.
Oh, and of course, she doesn’t mean the Buddhist or Jewish or interfaith temple plus Zoroastrians, new-agers and atheists; she means that the christian church is the only church.
Or maybe she’s just finished watching season 3 of Battlestar Galactica and she thinks she’s a hybrid Cylon.
Well, I checked out her blog and Vera is definitely referring to the beginning of the end of the civil rights violations of gay people being perpetrated by the religious right. Yay, Vera.
Those were excellent links. The first one, detailing out the court’s reasoning, struck me as very much like how the scientific process works. Except that in law, instead of laboratory test and measurement, it was a test and measurement of reasoning, taking the county’s objections one by one, and subjecting them to reasoning.*
Ten years ago, when people in Alaska were behind the religious right’s “one man one woman” stuff, they didn’t seem to understand when I said, “why are you dragging God into it?” “Huh? What do you mean, we’re dragging God into it?” As the Iowa court put it so well, it is a civil union. It’s a state-licensed status. Courts have every right to be there, and a certain sect’s definition of God doesn’t.
*Xian religulosities, take note: what you are most severly deficient in – is reasoning.
Good to know.
Well, spank my buttocks and call me Clarice! I never thought that Iowa would be so attractive to me, but it just goes to show – I’m as guilty as the next man of believing cliches.
Very open minded of you. That’s a great statement.
Kudos to you. You make a point that not enough people seem to accept; to paraphrase a little: “Just because I don’t like something does not mean that it is, or should be, illegal”.
Is the constitution based on Christian beliefs, though? I was under the impression that the founding fathers were mostly atheist, and that the whole seperation of church and state thing was put in to avoid the kind of situation we have with Proposition 8, i.e. where religious people are allowed to impose their theology on people who don’t share their faith. Bit like the Dutch cartoons of Mohammed – Religious fundamentalists who think that because they choose to follow a set of rules that says they can’t doodle a quick sketch of Mohammed, they should riot whenever anybody else does it, even though they aren’t choosing to be subject to the same arbitrary set of “rules”.
I’m rambling. I’ll stop there.
Niva Tuvia,
“the constitiution was *supposedly* originally based on Christian beliefs (even though there were no laws agains racial or sexual discrimination)”
Not so. Although some of the framers of the Constitution were theists (not necessarily Christian), the majority were atheists, secularists and free-thinkers. This factor and their strong opposition to the lack of freedom imposed by the English monarchy and the officially sanctioned Church of England, motivated them to deliberately avoid basing the Constitution on religious principles and specifically to include wording that guaranteed the separation of church and state.
Christians are always claiming that this is a Christian nation because the Constitution is based on Christian principles. If they took the time to read the biographies and history of the framers and actually read the Constitution, they would quickly be dissuaded of such a notion.
Yay! Thanks for passing that on.
Then kudos to Vera, she is not an idiot, she’s one of the good guys :)
I’m saying that it is based on Christian principles mostly because almost all the men who were present at the writing of it were professed Christians. When Christians write stuff, they tend to put God into everything they write. Lol. The separation of church and state was basically to prevent opression of the people and crazy crusades of religious zealouts that they had experienced back in England.
custador: “they choose to follow a set of rules that says they can’t doodle a quick sketch of Mohammed”
All that outrage over a silly little drawing should have alerted millions of Muslims to the absurdness of their religion. If your god or you for that matter would care about ink scribblings upon paper, what does that say about the greatness of you or your god? The paper and the ink upon it mean nothing…absolutely nothing. Look at it for what it is – paper with some ink upon it. Yes, I say to you oh devote Muslims- it is just paper with some ink upon it. It is nothing more! And your god cares with what foot you step out of bed… funny.
We didn”t all vote for the change. In fact it was a very close call and probably only passed because of the enormous amount of money and interference from outside of the state. I’m pulling for us to be able to get it changed back again.
Well, good luck (actually, not) with that in 2012.
Care to explain why? Or is that just sour grapes?
Would you have worked to overturn the “Ralph” case, or the schools decision?
Well, Michele, at least the election wasn’t stolen by a state in which the candidate’s brother was the governor.
And the “close call” to which you refer– you really need to look at the electoral college votes in addition to the popular vote (which had a margin of about 4%, so not so much a very close call).
That’s good to know!
You know I’m an atheist, right?
Well, they do the same thing with the bible, so it’s not that surprising.
Michele’s talking about Prop 8, isn’t she? I don’t think all of you are on quite the same wavelength.
Sorry Michele- just ignore my previous comment.
Oops! Well voting for change usually implies Obama.
Except that her reference to the state implies it wasn’t a national election, as was the case with Obama. ;)
Sorry- I’ve been on too many political blogs lately!
:)
Oops–I misread that too. Add my last to the “ignore” pile, Michele. I assumed you were writing about Iowa.
I live in San Francisco, but I was on vacation in my hometown of San Diego for the November election. SoCal is generally more conservative than NorCal, especially the rural areas.
Anyway, I was astounded by the number of people out there waving ‘Yes on 8′ signs. Not only was it a drastic change from the pre-election San Francisco I had been used to, but I was just flabbergasted that people who had little to do with the matter were out there protesting so vehemently. They worked themselves into a frenzy over it.
Even if I were anti-gay marriage, I think I would have great difficulty mustering up a sufficient feeling of being wronged to warrant joining a mob on a random street corner.
–
It was interesting being down in SD for the passage of Prop 8., because unlike the conservatives you are talking about, who are obviously pissed off, the ones I was around were all puffed up and proud that they had accomplished this thing. My friends and I were tail-between-our-legs sobered by the whole affair, and tried to console each other by looking forward to the day when Prop. 8 would be overturned. But that didn’t stop the Yes on 8 people from starting in with the the people have spoken nonsense.