not just the midwest -- the PLAINS. i would have thought michigan, wisconsin, or minnesota might be first here. iowa? unexpected.

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Iowa is Northern Plains, though. I am especially happy to have been born and (mostly) raised there, today.

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Sadly, Michigan passed a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman, so now we'll likely be one of the last to reach the same level of civil liberties as places like Iowa and South Africa. >8(

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apparently you don't understand south africa very well. that it supports a fairly wide spectrum of civil liberties isn't exactly surprising, nor would one expect the united states to be more progressive than it.

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Very true, the one South African I've known personally was very socially liberal. Blame it on my being a university student in the 80's and taking part in protests about our university's investments there.

(Of course, you really should be defending Iowans as well, if you want to be truly fair. >8)

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Yahoo!

Encourage anyone who's looking for this option to go ahead and take it NOW.
(Barring "stupid impulse" of course).

The reason for expediting is that the more marriages that are affected by a push to take it back, the harder it will be. Alot of our law, common and otherwise is bolstered by "precedent". So establishing this right early and often helps reinforce it.

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Before Prop 8, I would have agreed with you. Now I'm not so sure, especially because there's a fair number of Mormons in Iowa last I checked.

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I'm sure they are, and I'm sure that they've already been waiting to be mobilised.

That's why it's ESSENTIAL that if there are folks who have been waiting to be married that they do it ASAP.

The more people who are potentially and then later actually affected by these laws, the harder it will be to undo.

If these marriages are performed now, the longer that these folks have to become normalised and integrated into the society. The more FACES that there are for ordinary folks to think about, the more likely that ordinary folks will not pass these travesties.

Yes, the Mormons and others will put up a fight. That's why it's essential to make this fight as difficult as possible as complicated as possible, whereever possible.
Annulling legal marriages is likely to be costly and unpleasant. Someone has to pay and if the case is made that the taxpayers will foot the bill for undoing this, well, then, there's a *conservative* reason to oppose the opposition.

Yes, the Mormon church pumped millions of dollars into opposing this in CA, and they won, but not by a very large margin. Do they have enough millions of dollars to do this 49 more times, and is that narrow margin enough to actually *sustain* their agenda?

And the more blatantly *mormon* the opposition becomes, the more likely it is that anything they propose legally can be undone as Unconstitutional as it will put the state in the position of favoring one religious agenda over another.

The gay population in the world is about 10% of the whole. If the Mormon population is smaller than 10%, then they can't win in a fair election without help. And even if it's larger they still can't win without spending a lot of time, energy, and money.
It's time to start fighting over that middle ground and the first and best way to do it is for there to be as many legal marriages as possible that will be *victims* of any proposed new regulation.

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Well, their system seems to be set up the same way Massachusetts is. I lived there when gay marriage was first legalized and if the voters could have taken it away immediately like with Prop. 8 they would have. But by the time it got down to the last vote that would have put it on the ballot, we had been living with gay marriage for years and everyone got to see for themselves that it changes nothing and doesn't impact your life at all, so no one cared anymore. There is always the hope that will happen here as well.

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ROCK ON, IOWA!!

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That's great news... but I think the Vermont issue is a bit of a bigger and more important step. I just read that the bill's been passed by both their houses (5 votes short of the supermajority needed to override a veto in their house though) to allow gay marriage, not just civil unions. Of course, their govorner has said he will veto it.

Why do I think that's more important? Well, they may be the first state to actually legalize gay marriage on their own, and not by being told to do so by the courts. That is major. If they don't, there is a chance NY may in the next 2 years.

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Yeah, I've been watching that, too. I'm just not pinning a lot of hope to it, because the governor has promised a veto. Still, yes, good on the legislature, though.

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Apparently Iowa is more evolved and forward thinking than California. Who who'da figured.

This is good news.

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I never thought I'd be applauding Iowa as being ahead of the times.

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