Oh, lovely: “A joint resolution sponsored by 18 Senate Republicans was introduced Thursday proposing a constitutional amendment specifying marriage between one man and one woman as the only legal union that is valid or recognized in the state. ‘This starts the ball rolling. It’s imperative that the citizens of the state of Iowa have something that they can point to as a mechanism to start the ball rolling,’ said Sen. Merlin Bartz, R-Grafton. Now that we’ve had this introduced in the Senate, they’ll have the opportunity to contact their legislators and ask them to support the Senate joint resolution.'” Except: “However, Bartz conceded Senate Joint Resolution 2001 faces nearly insurmountable odds in being debated during the 2010 session — given the steadfast opposition from Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs.” [Globe Gazette]
Iowa Senate Says Hello to (Mostly Meaningless) Gay Marriage Constitutional Ban
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Wade MacMorrighan
Gods, this terrifies me as a resident of Iowa! Why do they want to destroy people’s lives for? Why do they keep automatically codifying civil/ secular marriage with the Christian religious var.? THAT is offensive to any non-Christian!
Sean
The thing about Iowa is that it’s so difficult to pass a constitutional amendment. Paraphrasing from
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20080120/NEWS10/801200342/Amending-constitution-is-a-long–difficult-process
(written at the time in 2008 when gay marriage was illegal, before the court decision):
“Amendments need to be approved by simple majorities in both the House and Senate in two consecutive general assemblies, then must be approved by a simple majority of voters in the next general election. Each general assembly lasts for two years. This year is the second year of the current general assembly. That means if an amendment is approved this year and in the [2011] or [2012] legislative session, it can be on the general election ballot in November [2012]. If lawmakers wait until [2011] to start the amendment process, the earliest that a proposed amendment could reach voters is November [2014].”
At the earliest, this could be passed in November 2012. By that time, Iowa will have allowed gay marriage for almost four years. By that time, it will have been legal for so long that key independent constituencies who would be needed to pass the ban will question why, if this is so important, why nothing bad has happened as a result of gay marriage in the meantime.
Wade MacMorrighan
True enough, Sean. But, you have the Republicans and the religious conservatives, and many others that just don’t think it’s “right”, and would leap onto a chance to strip me of my freedom to marry in order to take us back to a far more oppressive local culture. It is THAT which terrifies me, my friend. *shudders* Just look at what happened in Maine which is far more secular than Iowa? As I understand it, it was still the religious right that garnered more in their favor the we could, simply because this is not an issue that effects heterosexual-life (well, until someone starts making it almost impossible to seek a divorce, which is being advocated in Omaha!).
GeoffM
This danger to us isn’t just meaningless…it’s very real and is spreading. We need to ALL get up and get involved.
Charles Sawyer
As a democrat, I support such a constitutional amendment specifying marriage between one man and one woman, I would dare to say that a majority of democrats do as well. I would prefer that the government got out of the marriage business, and offer only partnerships or the register of partnerships or government purposes. Marriage has always been a religious ceremony, and if a church wishes to offer marriages to gays, then it could, but churches that doctrines go against it, wouldn’t have to and could refuse to or allow it take place in the church, without any civil or criminal recourse. I don’t want to force my beliefs on you nor should you want to force your belief on me. I posted the folloowing to anyother bog on this issue, The way to get around the “who-gets-what-when variety” is expanded the partner ship contract, and have them filed, no license needed, just file your partner ship with the court register, or county register which ever. Within the assistance area of government, if someone needs assistance with their family, you could continue the area of going after child support from absent parent, parent being defined as the one having the baby and the one contributing to having the baby, as within the partnership or outside of a legal partnership. Churches could continue to offer the religious marriage ceremony within their belief structure not going against their own beliefs. But the marriage would have no affect on the individuals legally within the court or government system. Only filed and registered partnerships would, and those could be between a man and man or woman and woman or man and woman. Sure their would have to be a few laws re-crafted, but hey, isn’t that what our legislative branches of government both state and federal are for and don’t they do that all the time, amend to change laws or expand them? Let them really do some work for once.
FakeName
See Charlie, the problem with your asinine argument is that government is never going to get out of the “marriage business”. I think it’s wonderful that you pay lip service to the idea of equal rights and benefits for both mixed and same-sex couples through some entirely new registration system (because it probably helps you sleep through the night despite being a bigot) but it will never happen. So all a constitutional amendment would do is lock out same-sex couples from the rights and privileges you claim you support. It is “forcing” your beliefs on us, whereas civil same-sex marriage “forces” nothing on anyone. In jurisdictions in which same-sex marriage is legal, churches and clergy are already free to refuse to perform same-sex ceremonies or allow same-sex couples to marry in the church building.
And, by the way, the simplest and most cursory reading of the history of the institution of marriage reveals that it has not always been a religious institution. Marriage was originally about property rights and establishing lines of succession. Try formulating an informed opinion for a refreshing change of pace.
Peter
Good Grief Charlie:::::You have your opinion: but you have not informed yourself about the history of marriage. Marriage started as a State or government activity. Necessary for tax and control of the activities of the state. Churches only got involved when they discovered it as a source of money and they needed lots more men to fight their crusades against other competing religions.
You have it backwards. The churches can have their religious blessings, if they want. BUT it is the State that needs to require the marriage license, in order to maintain records necessary to carry out the laws of the state. All of the laws pertaining to two people living together are all tied to the word marriage. The churches can bless it or not. The word Marriage has nothing tied to it being religious.
schlukitz
Ditto FakeName and Peter.
As a democrat, I support such a constitutional amendment specifying marriage between one man and one woman, I would dare to say that a majority of democrats do as well.
Um..that’s not forcing your beliefs on us?
I would prefer that the government got out of the marriage business, and offer only partnerships or the register of partnerships or government purposes.
But you just got through saying that you support the government making a constitutional amendment specifying marriage between one man and one woman. You’re talking out of two sides of your mouth. Which is is it, Charlie? Government in or out of the marriage business?
Marriage has always been a religious ceremony
According to whom? The Pope? Do some research, man.
Your faux sympathy and understanding comes across as very condescending and disingenuous, Charlie.
Wade MacMorrighan
@Charles Sawyer: You are absolutely 100% WRONG on historical grounds when you say that “marriage has always been a religious [Christian] ceremony”! In FACT the Church had NO interest in solemnizing marriage until the year 1250 CE, over 800 YEARS since its cruel inception and hope for domination! before that period, it was STRICTLY a secular and peasant-based affair with no religious over-tones, other than pagan. This is another example, Charles, of the sort of lies promulgated by Christians that I am fighting against! The so-called “Manhattan Declaration” is filled with similar such lies and egregious Logical Fallacies. What I have expressed here is NOT a matter of BELIEFS but a matter of FACTS.
Wade MacMorrighan
@Charles Sawyer: Furthermore, HISTORICAL RECORDS exist that declare, unequivocally, that during the medieval period the Church on occasion even solemnized the marriage between two men. And, throughout Coptic Christian Egypt (in antiquity) spells have been found in which a Priest was attempting to use magic in order to secure the love of another male.
Wade MacMorrighan
@FakeName: Very well put! I am soooo tiered of watching Christian supporters misuse history and claiming that we are attempting to “re-define marriage”!
urrrrrrg
STOP THE INTERACTIVE ADVERTS.
hyhybt
@urrrrrrg: Haven’t seen any of those here today, though one of the other 40 windows I’ve got open keeps playing music, a couple seconds at a time, and I don’t know which one.
Gorbeh
Damn conservatives. Say the don’t want to bring up gay issues cause it’d be a waste of time on more pressing issues such as the economy and war. And then once it gets passed THEY’RE the ones wasting time trying to get rid of it. I’m sick of that slimy lying hypocritical scum.
James UK
@ #5
What are you hoping for?
That a heterosexual married couple, not religious, married at city hall, have a couple of kids, college age, also not religious are going to say what to their kids if a proposition to get the government out of the marriage business comes up?
“Kids, Mom and Dad are married, but we think so that people don’t get upset about gays getting married, and because we can’t be mean to the gays and deprive them of the right to tax breaks and social security, we are going to vote yes on an amendment to the state constitution to get the state government out of the marriage business altogether. So you better get yourselves off to church real quick or get ok about jumping the broomstick.”
“Oh no kids, it won’t mean that we’re not married anymore – just that you can’t get married unless you get the old time religion. And stay straight.”
Have the courage of your convictions. You aren’t a Democrat. The failure to capitalize that word on 2 occasions is deliberate. What you mean is that it is democratic to deny or remove marriage rights from gays and lesbians by popular vote.
I’m not interested in your fake tolerance either. It is a mask. It’s mask that you and your ilk wear because you haven’t the moral courage to display your hatred and take the consequences. And I don’t mean having your property defaced or your life threatened, before you go all Tam-ie on us. I mean that you know that if the hate is displayed other than to the choir, the congregation would not support you and see you for what you are. Which isn’t much. And certainly nothing worth an hour to troop to the polling station for.
We’ve seen that mask on the face of Maggie Gallagher too. It’s not convincing to us. You are wasting your time on this site. And more importantly, ours.
Charles Sawyer
@FakeName:
See this is the one of the biggest problem you have, is that you see anyone that disagrees with you as a bigot, and true discussion can go no further. I am sorry for you.
And yes government used marriage for taxation, but it’s origin is in a religious ceremony. But then to understand this and believe this you have to believe the Bible.
Any time we create a law, we are forcing our belief on others, no matter what the law, so your questioning my support for the amendment, is doing what I wouldn’t want to, isn’t me, as one person, but the majority of people of voting age, and if for some reason, it doesn’t happen, I’m equally ready to accept the will of the people in the other direction, but it will be the will of the people not just a few forcing something on the hole.
You may not like it but that is how it is, unless it goes your way and then of course you will like it.
B
No. 16 · Charles Sawyer: “Any time we create a law, we are forcing our belief on others …” …. then why are you in favor of a constitutional amendment declaring marriage to be between a man and a woman given your claim that you don’t want to force your beliefs on others? With no amendment, the state is simply staying out of it.
Lukas P.
I’m encouraged that while checking out the Iowa paper linked above (Globe Gazette), the comments by Iowans has been largely anti the proposed ban. Fewer bible-thumping zealots than I’d have expected and feared, plus more people arguing coherently about the groundless basis for such a ban.
@Sean: thanks for the insight into Iowa’s constitution. Very helpful.
I’ll leave debates on the civil vs. religious aspects of marriage to those of you who are better informed,
FakeName
Charlie Tuna sez: See this is the one of the biggest problem you have, is that you see anyone that disagrees with you as a bigot, and true discussion can go no further. I am sorry for you.
Oh, don’t cry for me, Argentina. Reserve your sorrow for those who, in the name of equality, seek to deny equality. People like, well, you.
And yes government used marriage for taxation, but it’s origin is in a religious ceremony.
Um, no it’s not, moron. Read something about the basic history of marriage rites in the history of the world and you’ll see that marriage did not begin with any religious sect.
The fact that you’re willing to “accept the will of the people” even of that will is to strip human beings of human rights proves you’re nothing but a bigot. Sorry if no one has ever called you on your bigotry before or tried to make you face up to it, but, yeah, bigot. Also? Not very bright.
Wade MacMorrighan
@James UK: James, I think you touched on something very interesting, here. I wonder rather strongly if, at the heart over our freedom to marry, isn’t the belief by the Conservatives that extending this freedom to us might somehow “entice” others not only to think that we’re normal (which they have shouted time and again, we “are not!”), but that it would entice “the children” (sarcastically: whose virtues we MUST protect!) to experiment and choose homosexuality rather than heterosexuality. Hence, it is another example of what the late Yale prof. of History, John Boswell, certainly would have declare to be representative of culturally enforced heterosexuality!
Wade MacMorrighan
@Charles Sawyer: “…but it’s origin [marriage] is in a religious ceremony. But then to understand this and believe this you have to believe the Bible.”
Dude, I don’t know how more plainly I can say this to you, but…READ A HISTORY BOOK by a professional scholar!!! Marriage was NOT solemnized by the Church–which means that it was not originally a Christian religious institution–until the year 1250 of the Common Era, more than 800 after Christians started popping up in obstinate and offensive pockets throughout the Greco-Roman Empire. Read the brilliant book, which states precisely this, “What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution” by EJ Graff, who is senior researcher directing the Gender & Justice Project at Brandeis University’s Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.
Also, what you are declaring is blatantly offensive to NON-Christians! Shouldn’t THEIR views re: what does and does not make a marriage count for anything, or should only the Christians have a monopoly about what “defines” a marriage? There are numerous Buddhist sects, Hindus, Shinto, Native Americans, Shamans (as in Siberian, Mongolian, and Chuckchee), as well as Pagans and Witches who believe far differently about marriage than do you. But, we are able to solemnize over the religious marriage between a couple composed of a single gender. But, you know what? The State does NOT tell us whose marriage we can and cannot solemnize–that is an intensely personal choice based upon religion. But what you CANNOT do (and what the vast Christians in each state are blatantly IGNORING) is that a state-based of civil/ secular marriage has absolutely NOTHING to do with religion what-so-ever! Indeed, what they are trying to do is literally FORCE their religious views onto me. I COULD NOT *BE* MORE OFFENDED BY THAT NOTION!!!
But, answer me something: Would you feel the same way if the topic was not marriage equality but the African American civil rights movement? By your logic, because the Bible condones slavery and such, than you ought to support the notion that their views and their rights should not have been imposed upon “the majority” through the Judicial and Legislative branches, but should have gone directly before the bigoted citizens of each state to decide their fates.
Wade MacMorrighan
@FakeName: Somehow I doubt he WOULD accept “the will of the people”; just look at ol’ Mags and NOM who are fighting voter-led Civil Unions and Domestic partnerships in an attempt to have those gestures (separate-and-(un)-equal as they are) revoked! Yet, ol’ Mags has repeatedly said that she’s allow such to stand (despite what her org is actually doing), as she claims, “it’s not discrimination if you treat different things differently!”
hyhybt
@FakeName: Aack! Had to check and make sure it wasn’t the real Charlie Tuna you were quoting.
1EqualityUSA
Iowa’s motto:
“Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain.”
Iowa’s motto should be America’s motto. What happened?