November 23rd, 2009
 

365 Gay: News

City defers move to slam gay marriage


(Sioux City, Iowa) A proposed resolution declaring marriage in Sioux City, Iowa, as a union between a man and woman has been tabled while city lawmakers try to determine if such a measure would even be legal.

Citizens on both sides of the gay marriage issue packed City Council chambers Monday night where debate on the resolution was to have been held. But before deputations were heard, the measure was tabled.

Councilman Dave Ferris, Mayor Mike Hobart, and Mayor Pro-Tem Jim Rixner voted to put the resolution on hold until the city can get a legal opinion from Iowa’s Attorney General.

Last week, the Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case by six same-sex couples seeking to have the state’s exclusion of gays from marriage overturned.

Rixner said the resolution could be illegal.

“I think that’s especially important both in finding out whether we’re acting with purview of our authority as well as whether we’re exposing ourselves to some possible litigation as a party to the lawsuits that develop over this issue,” Rixner told KCAU television.

Rixner, Hobart and Ferris also said the resolution was divisive, would serve no real purpose and would change no laws. 

But Councilman Brent Hoffman, who first introduced the resolution, argued against tabling the measure.

“Some would argue that the resolution has no teeth because it’s merely affirming current national and state laws,” Hoffman said. “Well, you can’t then turn around and make a counterargument that even though it just affirms current national and state laws that it’s illegal or there are some grounds to challenge it on a legal basis.”

The state Supreme Court is not expected to rule on the constitutionality of restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples until spring.

Last year, Polk County Judge Robert Hanson struck down the state Defense of Marriage law, declaring it to be unconstitutional. Later the same day, Hanson stayed the ruling pending an appeal.

Arguing before the Iowa Supreme Court, Assistant Polk County Attorney Roger Kuhle argued that Hanson had overstepped his authority.

Kuhle also said that state support of same-sex marriage would damage traditional marriage, arguing that it would indicate to future generations that marriage is no longer about procreation.

Lambda Legal attorney Camilla Taylor, representing the six couples who are challenging the ban on gay marriage, told the court that the law violates Iowa’s constitution.

Taylor said that the constitution protects gay people’s rights to due process and equal protection.

Dennis Johnson, a former Iowa Solicitor General and now a Des Moines lawyer who also represented the same-sex couples, disputed Kuhle’s arguments that there would be long-term detrimental effects to marriage as “highly speculative.”

If the justices uphold Hanson’s ruling striking down Iowa’s ban, it would become the fourth state to legalize gay marriage after Massachusetts, Connecticut and California. 

Voters, however, in California last month amended the state constitution overriding the California Supreme Court ruling.  That vote is currently being challenged before the state high court.

A poll released last month found that a majority of people in Iowa support gay couples’ rights, but are divided on whether that should be marriage or civil unions.

The poll, by the University of Iowa, found that 28.1 percent of those surveyed support same-sex marriage, while another 30.2 percent support civil unions but not marriage.  A third of those questioned oppose any recognition of same-sex couples, with about 10 percent having no opinion or refusing to answer.


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  • gwychooch Said: December 16th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
    • Fundamentalist Christians keep hanging their argument against same sex marriage on the same sad talking point: “that state support of same-sex marriage would damage traditional marriage, arguing that it would indicate to future generations that marriage is no longer about procreation.”

      Bull hocky! State sanctioned marriages have never been about “procreation.” From the very beginning of organized state governments, marriages, in fact civil contracts, have be solely concerned with the control of wealth. Examine history and you will find that civil unions were a way to amagamate families, determine land and personal property owner ship, inheritance, legitimate birthrights (whose kids belong to whom and who are the bastards we can sell into slavery), and, of course, taxation. Married couples got tax breaks because they had the potential of encreasing the future tax base expotentially on the number of children they produced; single folks were socked with higher rates as a penalty for being amiss in their duty to the state and they had, suppossidly, a greater disposable income that could be tapped without a great deal of protest. Seems that the state figured out fromt he very beginning that if the kids don’t get it, the state will — and still does today. I can understand why the legislatures resist granting marriage to gays and lesbians. It would reduce the tax income while encreasing the costs social benefits. No doubt, they are more than happy to let the Churches do their dirty anti-gay work for them.

      The church’s main concern for marriage and subsequent procreation, however, is,and has always been, their interests in increasing the membership in order to exact tithes and collect pentance, in gold Thank You, from as many “registered” members as possible. Marriage has been the church’s greates power to contol the behavior and allegiance of their members. For example, if you examine Cathlic history, the only reason priest are forbidden to marry was because of a civil case in which the accumulated wealth of a deceased married bishop was given to his widow and children rather than forfited back into the Church’s coffers. Pissed the Pope and his hench-cardinals off, so they passed a new canon requiring priest to “give their virginity and sexuality to Jesus.” (Nuns as old maids are completly different story.) A kind of play but don’t pay sort arrangement guarenteed to hold the Church harmless in case horny young priests, brothers and monks decided to set up clandestine households with comely local wenches. Evidently, sins can be forgiven; civil verdics are final. Doesn’t it seem ironic that organized relegion, being as fanatically concentrated on accumulating tax-free wealth as they are, wouldn’t encourage gay/single folks to come join the fold and thereby contribute their share to the financial ledger. But, no one ever explained to my satisfaction the rational thinking of American Christians when it comes to rational thinking. Logic compared to blind faith is evidently an evil process.

      As a final thought, is seems that hackned cliches, such as the one noted above, as become as sacred to anti-gay fanatics as biblical scripture. Its repeated so often that one might believe it was spoke from God’s lips to the ears of our social foes. But, it only man’s words repeated adnausium. Cute-sy but hollow of meaningfull value.

  • Jim A. Said: December 16th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
    • Those two city council people in Sioux City are idiotic at the very least due their totally unnecessary drawing of what would be a major economic boycott of Sioux City.

      If anyone’s interested, here’s contact information for the Sioux City (”Siouxland”) Chamber of Commerce: http://www.siouxlandchamber.com/contactus.html; and for the Sioux City Tourism Bureau: http://www.siouxcitytourism.com/contactus.htm. Remember, be nice to *those* people — they aren’t the two buttheads on the city council. However those two buttheads on the city council could severely affect Sioux City’s economy and reputation. I know that if that city council resolution passed, there’s no way I’d set foot in Sioux City or give them a penny of any financial support whatsoever.

  • gwychooch Said: December 16th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
    • Bigots have never made sense. That’s why they never prevail in the long run. Eventually the mask of ignorance is ripped from their collective faces to reveal exactly what they are – fools and self agandizing hipocrits striking out against others as a childish defense mechanism to cover up their own sense of sexual, social and intellectual shortcomings. The only way to counteract the harm they inflict is to expose their personal lives to open scrutiny by honest people – the Emperor’s new clothes, so to speak. Every bigot has his or her own feet of clay. The job is to find the weakness and use it a legitmate weapon of defense. People who hate other people for some specific trait generally hate and fear that very trait within themselves. Just because they sound reasonable in what they say don’t necessarily make it true. When forced to defend their personal and private motivations, the public words of a bigot will be perceived by the populous for their shallowness. Nope, a bigot’s reasoning don’t make no sense at all.

  • Rpger Said: December 16th, 2008 at 4:28 pm
    • If the purpose of marriage is just to have children, as is being argued, that’s going to invalidate and prohibit an awful lot of marriages! Do these people want to prohibit all couples who cannot, or choose not to, have children from marriage? This is the obvious effect of their stand. Or are they proposing discrimination against just certain people? Makes no sense at all!!

 
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