Iowa Becomes the 3rd State to Legalize Marriage for All

One of the best stories written about the historic decision made by the Iowa Supreme Court appeared on www.latimes.com (link included below). Iowa becomes the third state to legalize marriage for all following Massachusetts and Connecticut.

Massachusetts was the first state to say that gays and lesbians could marry as well as heterosexuals. I remember being blown away by the gumption. I thought the Bay State was too Roman Catholic to actually step up and ensure everybody's legal right to get married. However, Massachusetts was one of the epicenters of the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church. It wasn't just the crimes committed by the priests, but the forced closings of parishes to pay for the sizable monetary settlements made to the victims that led to a lot of people feeling betrayed by the Church. Parishioners felt the Vatican should pay for it as they were the ones rubber stamping all the shady transfers and protecting predatory priests. That's not the only reason why the favorable ruling came to be in Massachusetts, but it couldn't have hurt. Anyway, marriage for all citizens was announced in May 2004 and by October, I attended my first same-sex wedding on a beach in Cape Cod. The world hasn't come to an end by the way.

Iowa's decision has these notable elements: 1) it was an unanimous ruling and written by a Republican. 2) Iowa is in the Midwest--can you find it on a map of the U.S.?--and I don't regard it as a bastion of liberalism. That might change now. Read the article. It does a decent job of explaining how this could affect the battle over Prop 8 in California.

Sample from the decision:

"We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The Legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification."

This is the same state that knocked down slavery decades before the Civil War. They abolished segregation in public schools 85 years before the U.S. Supreme Court got wise. The Hawkeyes were also the first state to admit women to the bar and practice law.

"Iowa court legalizes gay marriage as California watches"