IOWA SHOULD BE A BLUEPRINT FOR ALL GLBT CAUSES

The seemingly surprising victory in Iowa was actually a seven year long, brilliantly strategized campaign.

This morning, I read an interesting, Washington Post account of how the Iowa Supreme Court came to the unanimous decision to legalize gay marriage in the middle of our country's "heartland."

Against all odds and in defiance of many GLBT leaders who objected to pouring time, money and resources into a marriage equality fight in a staunchly conservative, unwinnable state, Camilla Taylor, a Chicago-based lawyer for the gay rights group Lambda Legal since 2002, stood by her beliefs.

Camilla, who is a straight, married mother, calls same-sex marriage "the civil rights cause of my generation." The 38-year-old Cleveland native and Columbia Law School graduate added, "I was brought up to think there's nothing more fulfilling than trying to achieve social change and do something right for society."

For seven years, Camilla traveled regularly from Chicago to Iowa to do research and lay the groundwork for her landmark case. When she immersed herself in Iowa's politics and history, she learned about its progressive past, including how the Hawkeye State was a pioneer in school desegregation, the first to admit a woman to its bar, and among the earliest to allow interracial marriage. The more she learned, the stronger she felt about Iowa being a winnable state. Even it's flag carried an encouraging motto: "Our liberties we prize and our rights we will maintain."

According to the Post article,

Camilla and her colleagues crisscrossed Iowa meeting gay and lesbian couples and organizing workshops and panels on issues that concerned them. She usually spoke as part of a panel that might include community members or the parents of a gay or lesbian child. Her colleagues did the same.

Sometimes it was lonely in those early days, Taylor recalled. At one event, just seven people showed up.

By December 2005, three years after she took on the cause, Taylor decided the foundation in Iowa was set and she filed a case for six gay couples. She selected them strategically, finding those who were representative and picking a pair from every region of the state.

Following her carefully planned strategy, she chose local lawyer Dennis Johnson, a former solicitor general who was heading the litigation department at a prominent Des Moines firm to be her co-council.

She had never met Johnson before and she took a big risk in approaching him because she wanted to keep her plans to file a lawsuit a secret until she actually filed it.

"I had never heard of Lambda Legal, or her," Johnson said. "I had never been involved in gay rights at all." But he said his firm was always interested in having its lawyers do pro bono work, so he agreed to look at the case.

After deciding to take on the case as co-council and getting to know Camilla, Johnson was quoted as saying,

"I've never felt so strongly about a case in my entire career." He credits Taylor as the one who really got the case moving. "She came up with the strategy, she researched Iowa law, she was the primary author of all the briefs. . . . I think she wrote briefs as best as I've seen in my career.

Numerous other carefully planned strategies were carried out, including adding the children of the gay couples as plaintiffs and working with local GLBT groups. Up until the filing, the existing local groups were more focused on being resource centers for health care, social networking, etc.. They weren't really geared for political activism.

Shortly after Camilla filed suit on behalf of the six couples, Sharon Malheiro founded the group One Iowa and began coordinating with Taylor and Lambda Legal. "There wasn't a strong local group that would be the go-to group for organizing a campaign for marriage equality," said Malheiro. "If we we're going to do this in Iowa, it had to be Iowans talking to Iowans." One Iowa took over much of the public education effort, leaving Camilla and her team to concentrate on the legal aspects.

The Washington Post Article is an excellent, 3-page piece and I strongly urge anyone who is already involved in or who wants to become involved in the struggle for any or all of the remaining GLBT rights and protections yet to be granted, to read the full article.

Nothing ever happens just because we want it to. We have to work hard and we have to work smart to MAKE IT HAPPEN. And this is a great example of how to go about it.

WELL KNOWN RIGHT WING PUNDIT ADMITS DEFEAT

In an Opinion piece published at the Christian news sight WORLDmag.com, well known conservative pundit Cal Thomas admitted that the battle against gay marriage is all but lost.

Using the classic movie musical The Music Man as a metaphor, Thomas cited lead character Harold Hill's proclamation to worried town folks that trouble had come to River City, Iowa in the form of a pool hall. A pool hall that would corrupt young people unless the local citizens bought the musical instruments he was selling and got their kids into a marching band. He promised that playing music would keep kids from “fritterin’ away their mealtime, suppertime, chore time, too” and going to the track to watch “some stuck-up jockey boy sittin’ on Dan Patch.”

I'm not sure if Thomas was aware of the boatload of ironies swirling around his choice of this American classic as the metaphor for his argument. For one, the movie and its Broadway counterpart were, at least in my generation, considered icons of entertainment within the GLBT community. The story was fun, campy and hilarious. And the would-be swindler finally sees the error of his ways and everyone lives happily everafter.

For a few others, substitute "gay marriage" for "pool hall", "religious doctrine" for "musical instruments", "church" for "marching band" and "praying" for "playing music" and you have the all-to-familiar rantings of the religious right wing fanatics we've all become accustomed to.

However, whether or not Mr. Thomas was or wasn't consciously aware of those ironies (I just found them to be personally entertaining), I do have to give him credit where credit is due. In his piece, after the usual rants about gay marriage leading to polygamy, God only intended man/woman couplings, etc. etc., he did say the following:

To those on the political and religious right who are intent on continuing the battle to preserve “traditional marriage” in a nation that is rapidly discarding its traditions, I would ask this question: What poses a greater threat to our remaining moral underpinnings? Is it two homosexuals living together, or is it the number of heterosexuals who are divorcing and the increasing number of children born to unmarried women, now at nearly 40 percent, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention?

Most of those who are disturbed about same-sex marriage are not as exercised about preserving heterosexual marriage. That’s because it doesn’t raise money and won’t get them on TV. Some preachers would rather demonize gays than oppose heterosexuals who violate their vows by divorcing, often causing harm to their children. That’s because so many in their congregations have been divorced and preaching against divorce might cause some to leave and take their contributions with them.

The battle over same-sex marriage is on the way to being lost. For conservatives who still have faith in the political system to reverse the momentum, you are—to recall Harold Hill—“closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge.”

Clearly, the right wing is finally beginning to see the writing on the wall and they're now looking for other issues to rally their minions around while they still have minions to rally.

Let's make one thing very, very clear here though. Our fight for marriage equality and equal protection under the law is, by no means, over yet. Although we are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel you can bet that the diehard religious fanatics who are making millions of dollars and thousands of converts from the false emotionalism of gay rights issues are going to continue sending trainloads full of lies barreling through that tunnel in hopes of blocking out that light.

Yes. WE WILL WIN - and soon. But not if we start acting like we already have.

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My thanks to Box Turtle Bulletin for the link to Thomas' piece.