WHY DID IOWA HAPPEN

Several of my posts lately have addressed relatively heavy subject matters. Just to remind us that there are a lot of really good people out there who aren't trying to put us back in our closets or reindoctrinate our youth to believe that violence can sometimes be an acceptable answer, here's something on the much brighter side.

In accepting the Capitol Champions Award, Iowa State Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal made it very clear why the Iowa Supreme Court decided the way it did and who was really responsible for that great victory.

Here's the video of the Senator's comments...

Of course, the Senator himself was the key person who shepherded the legislation that officially made the court's decision a reality through the State Senate.

Thanks to the Stonewall Democrats for sending me the email with this video.

I've posted several stories about Iowa's gay marriage ruling and background. The first was on April 3rd just after the ruling was handed down.

The others can be found at the links below:
IOWA SHOULD BE A BLUEPRINT FOR ALL GLBT CAUSES
BRILLIANT VIDEO BY ONE IOWA
IOWANS START GAY MARRIAGES

IOWANS START GAY MARRIAGES

This morning Melisa Keeton and Shelley Wolfe became the first legally married gay couple in the state of Iowa.

Although the new marriage law requires a 3 day waiting period after being granted a marriage license, Melisa and Shelley were able to successfully appeal that requirement earlier this morning and obtained a waiver from a local judge. The nuptials were performed by pastor Pat Esperanaza in a ceremony in front of the Polk County administrative offices in Des Moines.

Iowa also has no prohibition against out of state residents obtaining marriage licenses and getting married there. So, early this morning two Nebraskan women, Sarah Fentress and Bambi Smith, crossed into Iowa and were the first people in line at the Pottawattamie County Courthouse. They arrived around 6:15 a.m. and waited almost two hours for the Recorder Department to open for business.

“We’re very excited to be here,” Fentress said. “It means a lot to us, our children, our family as a whole.”

According to the Lincoln Journal Star:

The people waiting in line cheered at 8 a.m., when George Farrage, first deputy recorder, came out of the office with the signed Iowa Supreme Court order that states the Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.

“Let’s go,” Smith said eagerly.

Fentress said she and Smith realized they were not Iowans, and their marriage would not be valid back in Nebraska.

“Maybe one day we’ll get sick of it and move to Iowa,” she said.

An AP story posted at Yahoo News reported that:

The Iowa Supreme Court's unanimous and emphatic decision on April 3 made Iowa the third state to allow same-sex marriage, joining Massachusetts and Connecticut. Vermont passed a law that will take effect in September.

...The court issued an order Monday [today] confirming that the appeals process in the case has officially concluded.

Gay marriage opponents have no other legal options to appeal the case to the state or federal level because they were not parties to the lawsuit, and there is no federal issue raised in the case.

Their only recourse appears to be a constitutional amendment, which couldn't get on the ballot until 2012 at the earliest. A constitutional convention could be called earlier, but is unlikely.

CONGRATULATIONS to all of the Iowan newlyweds and to Iowa itself for showing such a strong and unequivocal commitment to justice and equality.

Oh, BTW - despite the strong-arm tactics of religious right-wingnuts who tried pressuring county recorders to join them and refuse to issue the new marriage licenses, there were no reports of even a single recorder refusing to issue the applications. Gay marriages - 1, wingnuts - 0!

BRILLIANT VIDEO BY ONE IOWA

I worked most of my life in marketing and advertising and I've come to appreciate strong, concise, well written visual messages that have high, professional production standards.

Usually, you would expect this kind of quality to come from places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or other large metropolitan areas that have vast pools of young, eager, gifted talent to draw from. That's why the tepid TV ads produced in opposition to Prop 8 in California were so disappointing.

Well, maybe when GLBT rights groups are looking for that kind of impactful advertising for future rights battles, they should look to Iowa. The new activist group One Iowa, the group that was formed during the brilliantly executed campaign to bring gay marriage to that state, just released the following television ad to combat the right wing's underhanded efforts to derail that success.

Anyone who doubts the veracity of the passionate, bold, driven commitment of today's new, young activist should check out Iowa. Yes. I did say Iowa.

BTW - thanks to Queers United for posting this video.

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.