Iowa Ruling Unanimous
Marriage Equality for Iowa of all places. Amazing!
(updated / edited) This is from the decision summary, and totally worth repeating, (emphasis all mine):
Initially, the court considered the County’s argument the same-sex marriage ban promotes the “integrity of traditional marriage” by “maintaining the historical and traditional marriage norm ([as] one between a man and a woman).” The court noted that, when tradition is offered as a justification for preserving a statutory scheme challenged on equal protection grounds, the court must determine whether the reasons underlying the tradition are sufficient to satisfy constitutional requirements. These reasons, the court found, must be something other than the preservation of tradition by itself.
“When a certain tradition is used as both the governmental objective and the classification to further that objective, the equal protection analysis is transformed into the circular question of whether the classification accomplishes the governmental objective, which objective is to maintain the classification.” Here, the County offered no governmental reason underlying the tradition of limiting marriage to heterosexual couples, so the court proceeded to consider the other reasons advanced by the County for the legislative classification.
Next, the court addressed the County’s argument that endorsement of traditional civil marriage will result in more procreation. The court concluded the County’s argument is flawed because it fails to address the required analysis of the objective: whether exclusion of gay and lesbian individuals from the institution of civil marriage will result in more procreation. The court found no argument to support the conclusion that a goal of additional procreation would be substantially furthered by the exclusion of gays and lesbians from civil marriage.
The County also asserted that the statute promoted stability in opposite-sex relationships. The court acknowledged that, while the institution of civil marriage likely encourages stability in opposite-sex relationships, there was no evidence to support that excluding gay and lesbian people from civil marriage makes opposite-sex marriage more stable.
Finally, some smart people are starting to get it. (Namely, that the arguments against same-sex marriage equality are a bunch of anti-intellectual crap.)
