Marriage equality comes to…Iowa!
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Congratulations to the Iowa GLBT community on this momentous occasion! Today the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously decided that a 1998 law limiting marriage to a man and a woman is unconstitutional. This decision gives Iowa the distinction of becoming the first midwestern state to legalize same-sex marriage, and the third state to legalize it nationwide (Massachusetts and Connecticut are the other two states that have legalized same-sex marriage). Legal same-sex marriages may begin in Iowa on April 24.
A press release issued by the Iowa Supreme Court read partly as follows:
“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. There is no material fact, genuinely in dispute, that can affect this determination.
We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law. Faithfulness to that duty requires us to hold Iowa’s marriage statute, Iowa Code section 595.2, violates the Iowa Constitution. To decide otherwise wold be an abdication of our constitutional duty. If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded. Iowa Code section 595.2 denies gay and lesbian people the equal protection of the law promised by the Iowa Constitution.”
To see the full text of the Iowa Supreme Judicial Court ruling in PDF format, please feel free to visit http://www.scribd.com/debdellapiana
Comment by Ruth on 3 April 2009:
An Amendement to Iowa’s Constitution will be proposed and passed.
Comment by Deb Della Piana on 4 April 2009:
Dear Ruth, that may well happen. However, Constitutional experts believe that it will take at least two years for Iowa to mount any kind of campaign to have an amendment passed. That’s exactly what happened here in Massachusetts. Even with a Republican governor, the amendments failed. They failed because, in the two or three years it took to mount a campaign to shred the state’s Constitution, the residents of Massachusetts realized that the sky didn’t fall and there was nothing damaging about gays having the right to marry.
Eventually, Ruth, we will have the right to marry nationwide. That day is coming no matter what because this country is founded on the U.S. Constitution and not the Bible. Period. To deny the GLBT community the right to marry is unconstitutional. We do not derive our laws from men or the government. They are guaranteed under the Constitution. Those were the words of our forefather. And, by the way, the U.S. Constitution has been amended many times, but never to deny rights only to expand them.