The Bean Blog

Proud to be an Iowan

Apr 3, 2009 In my humble opinion

Today Iowa became the first Midwest state, and only the third state in the union, to legalize same sex marriages when the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that the marriage definition of “between a man and a woman” was unconstitutional. News outlets, the media, blogs and Twitter were a flutter with the news. And kind of surprisingly (at least to me) most of the messages were pretty “yeah Iowa.” If you know me at all I think you know I wasn’t going to let this slip by without a little commentary from me.

The County presented “five primary interests of society” in favor of a banning same sex marriage; promoting procreation, promoting child rearing by a mother and a father within a marriage, promoting stability in an opposite-sex relationship to raise and nurture children, the conservation of state resources, and the government interest in promoting the concept and integrity of the traditional notion of marriage.

(1) Creating procreation. Granted, the majority of married couples end up becoming parents, but there are also several married couple who never have children. Should they have their marriage licenses stripped from them because they chose not to have children? After all, apparently the point of marriage is to procreate. What about couples who cannot have children? Many of them use fertility treatments, adoption or surrogacy…all things a same-sex couple could also use to add a child their family. What makes it ok for an opposite-sex couple to use those options, but not a same-sex couple?

(2) Promoting child rearing by a mother and a father within a marriage. The plaintiffs in this case gave the County a big smack down on this one. They had some very compelling evidence from respected organization, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychiatric Association, The American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, and the Child Welfare League of America, that children of same-sex couples tend to grow up to be well-adjusted adults. Children need loving, supportive parents. It doesn’t matter what sex they are. And kids can have male or female role models that aren’t a parent. What do you think kids of single parents do? They seek out other family members, church members, or school officials as role models. And what about child abusers, pedophiles and other deadbeat parents. Shouldn’t there be a law that they can’t get married too? After all they aren’t promoting child rearing so they should be banned. And yet they aren’t.

(3) Promoting stability in an opposite-sex relationship to raise and nurture children. Whether or not gay couples can marry or not, opposite-sex couples are doing a pretty shitty job of offering stability in marriages. The divorce rate lingers around 50% or so. Straight people are getting married two or three or more times. Gay marriages have nothing to do with the stability of an opposite-sex marriage.

(4) The conservation of state resources. Seriously?!? This is an excuse to deny loving couples the right to marry? Because the state doesn’t want to pay out death benefits? Why stop at banning gay couples from getting married? Why not ban black couples from marrying? That would save state resources. Or maybe we could ban everybody with the last name of Smith from getting married. That’s a pretty common name. That would save some resources. Or blondes. They are too dumb to get married anyway. And then we can conserve resources. Ridiculous much?

(5) The government interest in promoting the concept and integrity of the traditional notion of marriage. It used to be tradition to sacrifice animals too. Now PETA would be all up in your grill if you sacrificed an animal. It’s traditional for a bride to wear a white wedding dress. But we still allow women to get married if they show up in a red dress or a polka dot dress or a bikini for that matter. Traditions are nice, but they aren’t law.

I’ve heard a lot nay sayers getting their panties in a wad. But these judges just made law. They just made it so my children will have to learn/hear/see gay marriages. Shouldn’t I have a vote on that? Shouldn’t there be a majority vote? Since when does majority vote make law? Government makes law. You don’t like the law? Tell your congressman. He’s not fighting for what you believe? Don’t vote for him next year. That’s how government works.

And God forbid our children now have to grow up learning same sex couples have the same marriage rights as straight couples. What’s next? They’ll have to learn that women and black people have equal rights too? Oh wait. That already happened. Both of those groups got equal rights without majority vote too. And I think it’s safe to say that today almost everybody, the KKK and chauvinist pigs excluded, now agree that equality for all, regardless of gender and/or skin color, is a good thing.

Did you know interracial marriage was still illegal [not just frowned upon, but actually illegal with fines and even jail sentences] until 1967? 1967! That was just a few years before I was born. And even then the southern states didn’t want to legalize interracial marriage. They were forced to by a new federal law on civil rights. There was no majority vote. There was just the federal government saying “stop being such racist assholes.” [I'm paraphrasing, of course.]

I can guarantee you that same-sex marriage will be legal in all 50 states, eventually. It may not be this year. It may not even be in my life time [although I hope it is], but it will be some day. Nobody’s forcing you to marry a member of the same sex. Nobody’s forcing you to change your religion or what you believe. Nobody’s even forcing you to tell your children gay marriage is ok [although I hope you would teach your children to be tolerant of all different kinds of people]. In fact, if you’re not gay, your life isn’t going to change at all. But now gay couples can marry, make decisions about their partner in emergencies, receive health insurance and death benefits, and more. All things they should be entitled too as Americans.

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Tags: gay marriage, Iowa, legalize gay marriage in Iowa, same-sex marriage