DES MOINES, Iowa (ABP) — Iowa’s first legal same-sex marriage will remain its only one for the time being, thanks to a ruling filed just hours after the state’s first gay couple legally wed.
Polk County Judge Robert Hanson agreed Aug. 31 to halt enforcement of his earlier ruling ordering county officials to offer issue marriage licenses to gay couples. The order was in response to a request by county attorneys, who are appealing the ruling. It means the union between college students Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan is the lone gay marriage in what has become the latest battleground in the struggle over the controversial issue.
On Aug. 30, Hanson ruled that the Iowa Defense of Marriage Act, passed by state legislators in 1998, violates the Iowa Constitution’s equal-protection and due-process provision. The judge said the law unfairly singles out gays to limit their right to marriage.
“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 persons comprising such a couple are of the same sex,” he wrote.
His decision was the result of a lawsuit filed in 2005 by six gay Iowa couples.
Attorneys for the couples argued that Iowa has a strong history of aggressively protecting minorities’ civil rights. The state marriage ban, they said, ran counter to decades of Iowa jurisprudence in favor of minority rights. Hanson agreed.
But Polk County Attorney John Sarcone has promised to appeal the ruling, according to the Des Moines Register, and asked the judge to stay the ruling pending the outcome of the appeal.
Hanson’s initial decision has already raised a clamor among conservative activists and legislators in Iowa to amend the state’s charter to ban gay marriage, thus trumping the judge’s ruling. Most states, like Iowa, have statutes defining marriage in heterosexual-only terms. But, in response to similar rulings, dozens of other states have passed constitutional amendments in recent years outlawing gay marriage.
Conservative leaders vowed to consider that strategy to prevent gay marriage in the Hawkeye state.
“I can’t believe this is happening in Iowa,” said Iowa House Minority Leader Christopher Rants (R-Sioux City), according to the Register. “I guarantee you there will be a vote on this issue come January.”
Massachusetts is the only state in the union to offer full marriage rights to homosexuals and heterosexuals on an equal basis. Vermont, Connecticut and New Jersey each offer civil unions to gay couples that are identical to marriage in almost every way, without using the name. Several other states and the District of Columbia offer more limited protections to gay couples through domestic-partnership registries.
-30-