Let's have a rousing cheer for....

The Supreme Court of Iowa, the judges of which stepped up to the plate and did their jobs.

“We are firmly convinced that the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective,” the court said in an opinion written by Justice Mark Cady. “The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.”

It wasn't even close. Unanimous. They knew they were going to be accused of, "activism", and bearded that lion too:


“Our constitution does not permit any branch of government to resolve these types of religious debates and entrusts to courts the task of ensuring that government avoids them. This approach does not disrespect or denigrate the religious views of many Iowans who may strongly believe in marriage as a dual-gender union, but considers, as we must,only the constitutional rights of all people, as expressed by the promise of equal protection for all.”

Iowa, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.

I can only hope the Supremes in California manage to come to the same conclusion (the issues are a little different, but the core question is the same; what grounds are there, in the interest of the state, to disenfranchise one group just because another doesn't like them. The issue before the court is whether Prop. 8 was a minor revision, or a fundamental change. If the former, it stands. If the latter, it's null and void, and to bring it back up would require a constitutional convention, and larger than simple majority votes of the legislature, and the people).

Iowans are not likely to be able to pull a "Prop 8" on this one. Time isn't on the side of those who want to keep this system of separate, and unequal, going. For Iowans to reverse this takes two votes, in different sessions of the legislature, and a popular vote.

So it can't happen until 2012, at the soonest. That's three years of marriages. Three years of the world not ending. Three years of people going on with their lives, like the normal people they are.

The Court made a point of noting this doesn't require churches to do anything they don't want to (which is the way it is now. Freedom of religion doesn't mean a Catholic Priest has to marry a Mormon couple, or vice versa. If a church wants to solemnize a marriage, they can. If they don't, they don't have to. That lie was one of the big selling points the Prop. 8 people pushed)

I have faith the intervening years will be enough for people of open mind, and goodwill, to see that it's no skin off their noses.

The folks who raised the challenge were smart. As with the challenge to Prop. 8, here in Calif, this has no, immediate, federal question. The issue is done, as far as the courts are concerned.

Mind you that doesn't preclude a more limited federal question when some other state refuses to recognise a marriage celebrated
As is appropriate, I shall repeat myself, and others, when I quote:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.