In Iowa, spring wedding bells for gays to sound
WASHINGTON — You might expect gay marriage to be the law of the land in California, which was the case until Prop. 8 said no.
Same for liberal Massachusetts and Connecticut, where the gay rights movement is potent and a couple doesn’t have to be of opposite sex to get married.
But cornfed Iowa? Land of ethanol, the State Fair butter cow and Kevin Costner swinging his bat in Field of Dreams.
That would be the case now that the Iowa Supreme Court ruled today that marriage should not be limited to one man and one woman, ending the Hawkeye State’s ten-year ban on gay union.
Iowa therefore becomes the first Midwestern state and the closest venue to Missouri and Illinois where a gay couple can tie the knot. And many of Iowa’s nearly 6,000 gay couples might be doing so soon, the Des Moines Register suggests in its news account of the ruling.
Since Iowa has no residency requirements for marriage, that means anyone can travel to Cedar Rapids or Waterloo or maybe even Ottumwa for their ceremony.
Of course there will be a whole lot of handwringing and politicking, and it’s already begun. But Iowa’s not like California or even Missouri as far as getting a constitutional amendment on the ballot.
Such an amendment would need to win the approval of two consecutive legislative sessions before it could reach voters. Iowa legislators are saying that it’s too late this year. That means it could be November 2011 before voters see a referendum.
That would be just in time for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses opening the 2012 presidential primary season. What would that mean organizing-wise? Maybe not much, since Democrats presumably will already have their candidate and Republican aspirants will be singing from the same sheet music.
That reality won’t keeping political operatives from taking pot shots, as we saw this afternoon.
In Missouri, Republican Party executive director Lloyd Smith contended that the Iowa ruling “shatters the argument used by Democrats who opposed Missouri’s 2004 constitutional amendment preserving traditional marriage, claiming that an existing state law was enough to protect marriage between a man and a woman.”
He added in a statement: “If (Secretary of State) Robin Carnahan and (Sen.) Claire McCaskill had their way, Missouri would have been left in the same situation as Iowa: without a constitutional amendment and at the mercy of the courts.”
In Washington, Republican national chairman Michael Steele decried the ruling as another episode of judicial activism.
“I firmly believe that marriage should be between one man and one woman.,” Steele said in a statement. “A state’s autonomous nature allows it to change its laws as the citizenry sees fit, but it should be done by the people, not through judicial decree.”
Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt, who’s seeking the GOP nomination for Senate, took a similar tact with regard to judges.
“The Iowa Supreme Court chose today to legislate from the bench by redefining marriage without any concern or deference to the democratic process,” he said.
Judicial Activism: “When I don’t agree with the verdict”
Missouri Republicans are all up in arms, but don’t see the hypocrisy when it comes to CCW, CWIP, campaign finance, minimum wage hikes for wait staff, and all the other things they want to/have overturned that the voters approved.
It is the job of the Judiciary to interpret laws.
That is what the right is complaining about, judges and courts that interpret the laws in a way that doesn’t conform to their fundamentalist view point. Well, good on Iowa!
I just wish Missouri had enough sense to remove the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. But I guess we’re still to back-woods ’round here.
It will happen, get used to it. You’all couldn’t keep black men from voting, you’all couldn’t keep women from voting. You’all couldn’t keep schools from integrating, and you’all couldn’t keep interracial marriage from happening. Do you’all know why? Because you’all were wrong. And you’all are wrong again.
Oh yes, and after 5 years of marriage in Massachusetts, the world has completely imploded.
Move on GOP. It’s a tired message and it does nothing to move America forward.
Judicial Activism?? Hardly !! The founding fathers separated the judiciary from the legislature precisely in order that the rights of a minority cannot be denied by the tyranny of the majority. History will ultimately confirm that justice demands equal recognition under the law for all committed, loving relationships regardless of sexual orientation. “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Iowa today bent that arc a bit more toward equality. Hurray for that!!
When will all people understand that a marriage is one where two people commit to a shared unity of spirit and purpose and love for each other regardless of the orientation of the two people. What the GLBT community is asking for is the legal rights prescribed to the legal union of a heterosexual couple. If my partner and I want to purchase property together or file taxes together we can do so and receive the same benefits as a heterosexual couple. If one of us bring a child to the marriage, the other can adopt. If adoption is our option, we can give a child a loving home and both can make decisions in the best interest of that child. If my partner or myself is sick, we want the right to make medical decisions for each other. When my partner or I come to the end of our life, we want to know that either of us can speak to or make decisions about what happens to our bodies. We want to know that legally speaking, nothing can put us asunder. I would hope that the GLBT community understands as I do that this would also put us on the same terms of the legal disolution of marriage. We certainly would not be exempt from divorce should a marriage go bad. This has nothing to do with religion or the church or the sanctity of marriage in religious terms. Remember that not all heterosexual couples are married in the church. Many people are not religious and choose a civil ceremony. If the minister of a particular church does not agree with the beliefs or intentions of a heterosexual couple, they can refuse to marry them as well so those people often are married in civil ceremonies under the law or they find a minister who is willing. Why can’t we?
Under the Police Powers of the State, the Legislature has the authority to create laws that promote the public morality in accordance with the majority…As long as that doesn’t interfere with the “rights” of others.
Should we also permit close relatives to get married (i.e. Brothers and sisters)? Don’t they have the same right to fall in love and make such a commitment? -What about polygamy?
Perhaps some of the Gay Rights supporters could weigh in on those questions.
One more nail in the coffin of the much-beloved but completely ignorant idea that us Midwesterners are all a bunch of knuckle-dragging homophobes. Though I’m not a big fan of this kind of change through judicial action (rather than legislative), a victory for human rights and dignity is a victory for human rights and dignity. Hooray, Iowa gays!
I’ll weigh in, JustBecause. The fact that the state may have the authority to prohibit something doesn’t mean that it should. In my opinion, there’s no sound legal reason for prohibiting polygamy, if by “polygamy” we mean committed relationships that are not limited to two people. After all, polygamy is going on all the time via open affairs and adultery where one partner hasn’t given explicit permission to the other to “cheat” but looks the other way. The two most frequently cited concerns about polygamy boil down to welfare fraud and underaged sex, and we have laws already that address both issues (and the laws could be improved, as well, rather than forbidding consensual adult behavior). So to me, no, there’s no real justification for banning polygamy.
As far as the state having the power to legislate the morality of the majority so long as it doesn’t interfere with the rights of the minority, that’s arguable. But framed in those terms, the conflict then becomes what “rights” do the minority have? Many would argue that the right to enter into civil marriage with the partner of one’s choice is a basic human right. The morality part comes in when the majority decides that, because the majority of people are straight, the ones who aren’t don’t deserve the same consideration. Anti-gay marriage people would argue that gays have the “right” to enter into one-man-one-woman marriages, same as straights; but that argument denies the fundamental nature of sexuality. They would say, Well, just be straight and you can marry who you please. But I bet if the situation were swapped, and we said, “Just be gay, and you can marry whom you please” they wouldn’t appreciate it. It’s an unwinnable argument, and the way you come down on it is basically determined by whether you believe gays have a “choice” to be gay or just are who they are. And if you believe they just are who they are, then it’s the same arguments you can make about discrimination because of gender, or because of race - an unchangeable aspect of biology that should not be used to limit people’s enjoyment of their full citizenship rights.
The purpose of the judiciary is to interpret laws, not rewrite them.
The judiciary may decide that laws–passed by a legislative body or by direct plebiscite–allowing gays to have a marriage that is legally indistinguishable from heterosexuals are valid. In that case, they are interpreting the law.
Peremptorily deciding that laws passed over the centuries exclusively governing the behavior of one man and one woman should instantly apply to two men or two women is judicial activism plain and simple.
Judicial activism is a dangerous thing. We should not forget that the promise of racial equality launched by the Civil War and encoded in the Constitution by the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution were eroded and ultimately set back by almost a century by the judicial activism of the Gilded Age that allowed “separate but equal,” Jim Crow laws, poll taxes and the like.
A previous poster’s comment the “rights of a minority cannot be denied by the tyranny of the majority” is a noble sentiment. However, by encouraging judges to invent rights for the minority, we short circuit our whole democracy and the protections there for both the majority and the minority.
Want gay marriage? We need to vote on it. Pretending that laws governing marriage (for millennia a man and a woman) can simply be extended to single-sex relationships is simply not the case.
Judicial activism strips the people of our voice.