That’s Iowa’s state motto and it seems apt in light of today’s events.
The Hawkeye State’s Supreme Court upheld a 2007 Polk County ruling which essentially said that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated the equal protection clause of the state constitution. When that ruling was handed down, Iowans had less than a day of legal same-sex marriage because the county appealed the decision to the highest court in the state, and the judge postponed any further marriage licenses until that court could rule on the matter. I briefly touched on this when it happened and I mentioned that only one couple, Tim McQuillan and Sean Fritz, came back with a completed marriage license within the 22-hour deadline. No major news outlets and only one blog has bothered talking to them since.
In its unanimous opinion, the court explicitly pointed at the arguments against same-sex marriage rooted in religious tradition and stated that the state government cannot have any religious views of its own. If recent bans on same-sex marriage (including California’s) are any indicator, religious conservative groups will continue to motivate action on this issue using religious dogma but will either veil that language or remove it from their final actions. We, as a country, still have little recourse for half-truths.
Republican State Senator Paul McKinley issued a statement to the Des Moines Register saying that he thinks all Iowans should have a voice on the matter, so the state’s legislature should immediately pass a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a bond between one man and one woman. In other words, he thinks everyone should have a voice — as long as it’s his.
You can read the Iowa Supreme Court opinion here.
