aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Iowa judge strikes down gay marriage ban
A Polk County judge on Thursday struck down Iowa’s law banning gay marriage.
The ruling by Judge Robert Hanson concluded that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and he ordered the Polk County recorder to issue marriage licenses to six gay couples.
This will be appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, and who knows where it’ll go from there. But this is Iowa. Just a bit over four months from the caucuses.
This is now an issue in the presidential campaign.
As Todd over at MyDD says, the GOP will trip over itself blasting “activist judges” blah blah blah. But on our side, how will they react?
Our candidates should embrace it. They’ll be too chickenshit to do so, but they should. Without reservation.
LATER: John Nichols in The Nation:
Hanson’s decision accepted the argument of Iowa attorney Dennis Johnson, who represented six same-sex couples who filed suit after they were denied marriage licenses.
Johnson, a veteran civil rights lawyer, made the case that Iowa’s nine-year-old Defense of Marriage Act—which is similar to those on the books in other states and at the federal level—is at odds with the state constitution’s equal protection and due-process clauses.
Johnson’s point is a vital one that is not talked about enough in discussions of same-sex marriage that tend to focus more on personal morality than the rule of law. And it will frame a discussion that, particularly for Democratic candidates who have tended to support gay rights while shying away from embracing same-sex marriage, could take the whole debate to a new and much more serious place.
