Out of the Blue

From my streaming headlines this morning, this one came right out of left field:

Hanson ruled that the state law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman violates the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection.

"Couples, such as plaintiffs, who are otherwise qualified to marry one another may not be denied licenses to marry or certificates of marriage or in any other way prevented from entering into a civil marriage ... by reason of the fact that both person comprising such a couple are of the same sex," he said.

It will mean another push for another state constitutional amendment, with the usual empty rhetoric from the right about "protecting" marriage by excluding people, and probably a completely inadequate response from the left.

Iowa can surprise you, though.

Update:

Here's more detail from the Iowa Independent. Here's a human angle story (the Johnson Country Recorder of Deeds is openly gay), and an OpEd about the national ramifications (Iowas being an early caucus state and all). (And note that this story was Atrios' first post this morning, which I found after I posted here. Thanks to him for the links.)

Update II:

While surfing around on this topic I ran across this older post by B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest) on the Massachusetts legislature's defeat of an anti-marriage amendment. It begins with what I consider a fundamental mischaracterization of the legislature's actions:

The more I think about the reaction of the gay groups toward the vote last Thursday in Massachusetts blocking a popular vote on a state constitutional amendment on gay marriage, the more disturbed — deeply disturbed — I become by their rhetoric and attitudes. They are gloating about denying the citizens of the Bay State an opportunity to vote on this important issue.

Blatt and I have had private correspondence about this, and he's aware of my thoughts on it: The Commonwealth of Massachusetts followed the procedures outlined in the Massachusetts constitution for considering amendments to that constitution. To characterize it as "blocking a popular vote" is a little more than special pleading. (He then immediately backpedals, claiming that he doesn't believe that the people need to vote on those questions. Which is it?) He then goes on:

What disturbs me is the rhetoric of the gay groups. They act as if Massachusetts were about to put people’s rights up to a vote. And yet the issue was not whether or not gay individuals could live freely with the partner of their choosing in the Bay State and call themselves married (if they so choose), but whether or not the commonwealth would recognize those individuals as married. It was not an issue of basic rights or fundamental freedoms, but, I repeat, of the gender composition of couples the state chose to privilege.

This, to me, is revealing of a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of government in marriage: in this country, as in just about every other one I can think of, marriage is a civil contract. There's no escaping that, and that little issue is an integral part of the semi-mythical 5,000-year-old tradition, to which the Christian Church is a relative latecomer. In point of fact, as long as the United States recognizes marriage as a "fundamental right," which it has done at least since Loving vs. Virginia (and I count that more as an affirmation than an introduction), then yes, indeed, the Commonwealth was about to put people's rights up for a vote. In the realm of fundamental rights, popular vote has never been the final authority in this country. The way Blatt outlines it, "living in sin" is fine. Gays should be happy with that, and forget being treated by our own government the same way other couples are treated. Sorry, but that argument is simply wrong. The question Blatt avoids here is whether the state has the authority to privilege certain couples over others. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court found that it did not, under the terms of Massachusetts' own constitution. The legislature has now concurred.

Regrettably, my time for this session is up. There's more here that I want to discuss, including the comments by Jonathan Rauch that Blatt cites. (On first, admittedly quick reading, Rauch's arguments strike me as flawed, but I need to investigate them more fully.)

Later