8/31/07

Iowa Judge Rules for Equality

From the Des Moines Register, and via Crooks and Liars:

A Polk County judge on Thursday struck down Iowa’s law banning gay marriage.

The ruling by Judge Robert Hanson concluded that the state’s prohibition on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and he ordered Polk County Recorder Julie Haggerty to issue marriage licenses to several gay couples.

“It’s a moral victory for equal rights,” said Des Moines lawyer Dennis Johnson, who represented six gay couples who filed suit after they were denied marriage licenses.

Camilla Taylor, an attorney with Lambda Legal, a New York-based gay rights organization, said the ruling requires “full equality for all Iowans including gay and lesbian Iowans and their families.”

“The Iowa Constitution has lived up to its promises of equality for everyone,” she said.

From Love Makes a Family:
Civil unions will provide needed rights and protections for couples and families in our state. But although this law is a step in the right direction, it must not remain the end product. The struggle for marriage equality has always been about more than rights and protections; it is also about dignity and respect and equal treatment under the law. Civil unions create a separate status for one class of people and as long as there remain two lines at the Town Hall—one for same-sex couples and one for everyone else—Love Makes a Family will continue to be here, working towards a day when the final discriminatory barriers to marriage are finally struck down.

The bigoted and overpaid "asparagus-studded choux pastry puffs" at the FIC Blog - A little read offshoot of the disreptuable Family Institute of Connecticut - may not understand the fact that this is just a natural progression of how of the law in an equal society works, so we can only hope that people in this State, people like Jodi Rell, will get over their homophobic tendencies and start thinking about equal rights.

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