Apr 03 2009
Slowly awakening to the obvious
The Iowa Supreme Court today struck down a ban on same-sex marriage, and if you think similar acts from states on the east and west coasts of America are somehow “extreme,” then what is it when a state smack in America’s heartland comes to the same conclusion?
This summary from Law Dork is a good technical wrapup, if you’d like to go beyond the sound-bite versions you’ll get from TV news.
As I’ve been saying for years, gay marriage is strictly a civil rights issue. All the arguments against it are religious in nature, and we separate church and state in this country. Individual religions are free to express their beliefs that this is somehow against God, just as religious people for years argued against civil rights for black people by dragging out some obscure Bible quote “proving” that African Americans are “mud people” and therefore lesser beings than good white Americans.
Somehow I doubt there are many of those folks left who would willingly cop to such views in regard to black people, outside something like Stormfront anyway. Well, people who whip up fear of a gay planet aren’t any better human beings in my view.
But in terms of obtaining a marriage license from a civil authority, these views are irrelevant. You can still download the GAO report from 1997 (it’s a PDF in case that bothers you) that shows married couples have 1,049 rights not available to single people. Some folks say subsequent counts have added another 100 or so rights missed in the original report, but I couldn’t find any evidence of those later counts, so I’ll let the original document stand.
Anybody who thinks this paves the way for bestiality, polygamy or for Clem in Bettendorf to marry his tractor, here’s some advice: don’t type it out anywhere or say it out loud .
