Tuesday, December 09, 2008

Marriage Equality Comes to Iowa?

The Iowa Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this morning. (EDITED TO UPDATE LINK)You can listen live here. (FWIW, the justices are hitting both sides hard, and one side was clearly ready for it. The one defending marriage discrimination was not compelling at all.) A decision is expected sometime in March, according to a totally unofficial source I saw this weekend at Gov. Culver's Holiday Party.

I can scarely say how much this would mean to me personally. I've always had mixed feelings about signing state marriage licenses when the state participates in discrimination against my family. I've done so, for a variety of reasons I won't go into here, but it is not without discussion with each couple I've married about my feelings.

When marriage equality came to my home state, California, this past spring, I seriously considered packing my robe, stole, and book of worship, getting a plane ticket home, and showing up at state courthouses asking who wanted to be married on the first day gay and lesbian couples could. Instead, I waited until August, and flew home to marry my moms, who have been together for nearly 20 years. (I blogged about that experience
here.) And good thing they did, too, given the result of Prop 8 last month.

Now that I'm living here in Iowa, I am positively giddy at the possibility of marriage equality here. I joked with some friends that if this does pass, I'll go to Des Moines in my robe, stole, and BOW on the first day it's legal to marry gay couples there. They said, "Please don't. We may want you to marry us that day." For them, and for all my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters who long to know what my beloved and I get to take for granted, let's hope the Iowa SC does the right thing.

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