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Loading ...Iowa Supreme Court hears gay marriage case
12.09.2008 1:27pm EST
(Des Moines, Iowa) The Iowa Supreme Court grilled attorneys on both sides Tuesday in a case challenging the state’s exclusion of gays from marriage.
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.In court Tuesday, 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.
“One could easily argue, and we do, that fostering same-sex marriage will harm the institution of marriage as we know it,” Kuhle told the justices. “It’s not going to happen tomorrow. We’re not going to see any changes tomorrow, next week, next year, in our generation. But you’ve got to look to the future.”
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.”
“The question is: Why are same sex couples kept out?” Johnson asked. “They have families, they would benefit from the stability, the financial stability. Their children would benefit.”
Both sides exceeded their allotted time as the justices continually interrupted the attorneys to ask questions.
Justice Mark Cady wanted to know whether opening up gay marriage would promote polygamy. “How do you stop more than two people from getting married?”
Johnson replied that marriage always has been a union of two people and if those people were of the same-sex the principle would not change.
“We put our best case forward, and hope that the Court breathes life into the Iowa Constitution’s promise of equality,” Taylor told a news conference following the hearing.
Taylor was the chief architect of the lawsuit and argued it in court since its inception.
Johnson told reporters that Iowa has a long, proud history of protecting individual rights.
“The government has no business standing in the way of a loving same-sex couple who wants to take responsibility for each other and their family,” he said.
The six same-sex couples involved in the case were in court to hear the arguments.
“My grandparents were married 68 years and Reva’s grandparents were married 57 years. My family values the importance of marriage and commitment and I learned that lesson very early – it’s a lesson I want to pass on to our son,” said Ingrid Olson, one of plaintiffs in the lawsuit along with her partner Reva Evans and their son Jamison.
It is expected the court will not rule for several months.
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.
While the Iowa justices consider their ruling, one same-sex couple was legally married in the state.
In the two hours between the time Hanson made his original ruling and then stayed it, Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan of Des Moines applied for a marriage license, found a judge to waive the waiting period and were married. They remain the only legally gay married couple in Iowa.
A poll released two weeks ago found that a majority of people in the state 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.
In a separate case, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled in January that co-adoptions by same-sex parents were legal.
The case involved a lesbian couple who had split up. While they were together one partner had adopted as a co-parent the children of her partner. When the relationship ended the birth mother asked a court if the other woman had visitation rights and could be compelled to pay child support.
A lower court ruled that co-adoptions by same-sex couples were illegal and threw out the case. The Supreme Court disagreed and ordered the lower court to revisit the case.
You know, I’m really getting tired of hearing all these arguments against same-sex marriage. None of them really stand up to scrutiny. None of them are truly valid.
Procreation, as it has already been pointed out, cannot be the sole purpose of a marriage. Plenty of couples procreate without marrying, and plenty who marry don’t. But let’s say it is about procreation. Great! I want kids. Make it legal for me to adopt, or provide some other method for me to have kids other than knocking up some random woman and I’ll give it a shot.
I agree that marriage is sacred, that it is something special, but considering the divorce rates in the US it seems that many heterosexual couples do not agree with me. So if they’re not going to take marriage seriously and honour their vows, if the law won’t enforce the “till death do we part” section of the marriage vows, marriage isn’t all that sacred in the eyes of the law, now is it? Except, of course, when it comes to denying the right of same-sex couples to marry, and then it becomes a sacred institution.
Balls.
I acknowledge that there is a difference between legal marriage and religious marriage, and I would oppose any law compelling a Church to marry two people. It is up to each Church to decide who they will and won’t marry, and as much as I dislike it I do support their right to refuse to marry gay couples. I do not, however, support the State’s right to do the same.
My Church can tell me I am not entitled to the same rights as heterosexual couples. I will disagree with but respect their beliefs. My government should not deny me my rights, yet that’s what they’re doing. I can only hope the court in this case sees sense and recognises that permitting the legal institution of marriage for same sex couples does not, in any way, undermine the religious institution of marriage.
And after the idea of monogamy, (that is, no nookie on the side) hetero women won their rights by withholding sex from their husbands. They had some other powerful leverages, like cooking good meal and cleaning the house; after all, “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach” I heard all my young life. I think their is some truth to these ideas.
So, exactly what can we withhold, or make sour, to cause the people to grant us our already overdue rights?
Creativity? Ideas? Are we the group who has most of the good ideas. Doubtful. Someone will always fill that void.
Money? We may have some financial clout, but even the large group of fundamentalists did not have the financial clout to make several boycotts work. Ask Disney!
None of these. I believe that the sanity, thoughtfulness and generosity of several liberal courts are our only chance. Perhaps we need to have many more lawsuits to make our plight known to the courts and the legal sages. Unfortunately, logic has no real meaning in the courts … only precedence. If they do not keep the precede4nt, the judges must make a VERY POWERFUL argument to overturn many previous rulings and opinions. Do we have that argument on our side? I surely hope so.
As I’ve seen in several articles, including a letter in the Dec 10 New Yorker magazine, the real issue which drives antipathy against gays, but is unspoken, is that gay people are seen as attacking “special rights for males” vs women, e.g note the “never never never” arguments against women voting in the early 1900s. Basically, men have always dominated over women since the early days, something still buried in our culture, and very obvious in conservative religions. Think Islam for example, Orthodox Jews, the Catholic church and right wing independent christian churches. All male dominated. And all the most vocal opponents of gays being granted equality under the law. The root issue is that gays, are seen as not procreating, which when the bible was written, was the number one imperative for the tribe. Not enough children, add in the horendous infant mortality rate, and the tribe could die out. The source, though not explained, of Leviticus’s prohibition.
And what we really need today, in a world with limited resources, and so many wars over resources, is to stop population growth. And btw find couples, gay and str8, who are willing to support and bring up the children of these homophobes – the very people who are destroying marriage as well with their terrible divorce rate, now above 50%. As well as their abandonment of their wives and families as they search for a new “piece of Ass” to prove to themselves their masculinity.As shakespeare said long ago, “methinks he doth protest too much”.
It’s about power, not God. Bottom line. If only the Pope would come out [sic]and say so. That is the problem.
But women have generally won equality, although among our less educated folks, it is still an issue. The same people who fall for fundamentalist religions to a large degree, and can’s stand the ideas of gays being treated with equality and respect. And as we see sometimes,eg witness the stupid lawsuit saying Pr. Elect Obama isn’t a natural born citizen, they are still fighting for segregation, and the gays are just their next victim.
But carry on. Social change takes time. Blacks are doing fairly well now, it is generally considered improper to be opposed to their participating in American social / political / economic life. Same for women. Same for Jews (I am btw). As the final joke upon these bigots is that their great grandchildren will likely be mixed race (50% of US population by 2050, one of my grandchildren is), so also will they discover that some of their children and grandchildren will turn out to be gay. And not hopefully be driven to suicide by their parents and a homophobic society based on power of one group over another.
I find it terribly distressing that a justice of any supreme court would ask a question about polygamy in relation to gay marriage. Polygamy has nothing to do with gay or straight marriage, and only those with an agenda bring polygamy up. When they do, they are usually what I’d consider uneducated or overly religious. That a supreme court justice asked the question is truly frightening.
I concur with your conclusion, Aaron. There is reason for guarded optimism — if only that the Iowa State Constitution is so superbly written where protection of individual rights is concerned and that the Court has a progressive history of which they are justly proud. For example, they issued a Brown vs. Bd. of Ed.-style ruling many decades prior to the federal one — among the first courts in the nation to do so. And there has also been a same-sex civil union dissolution case ruled in our favor — with the judge in that case soundly defeating opposition to his reaffirmation vote with near-unanimous support from the legal community. Johnson stumbled a bit on equal protection, able to say only that it was self-evident, but that was also well-covered in the briefs, so it was hardly a fatal error — just a temporary bit of being tongue-tied in surprise. The Justices seemed not to be at all impressed with the procreation or tradition arguments from the other side.
LOrion: You’ll be able to see for yourself the quality of the arguments in a couple of weeks — the usual time for them to be posted on the court website. In the meantime, rest assured that all the bases were covered in the briefs and that the oral arguments were pitched to reach the Justices, Iowa style. Johnson, as former state Solicitor General, for example, has had plenty of experience arguing before them.
Yes, there much more was debated than was caught in this article. The justices had already read briefs submitted by each party. Yes, some of the questions may have seemed ridiculous from a gay person’s perspective; but understand that they needed to be asked in a public forum so that notions such as same-sex marriage leading to polygamy can be publicly disputed. There were many very interesting assertions and thoughtful questions by the justices. Quasi: the “mid-western judges” are just as competent as those elsewhere (remember that courts in Wasington and New York did not find a right of same-sex couples to wed). And, yes, the justices are well aware of the rulings in other cases, including California. Iowa courts have a proud, progressive tradition; this is why Iowa was chosen for this challenge (along with a slow constitutional amendment process). While the outcome is undoubtedly unkown, there is reason to be optimistic.
Quasi,
Even arch-conservative US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the same thing that you stated in your first couple of lines of your post about the various straight couples that through no fault of their own that would not be allowed to marry if procreation were the sole standard used for allowing marriage.
Thanks for pointing that out.
And my belief is that marriage is for the comfort and joy of a couple and children if it possible. The word here is IF.
Asst. Atty for Polk County, Iowa Roger Kuhle is missing those points entirely.
If marriage is only about procreation, then sterile people cannot get married and barren couples (after say 3 years) must have their marriages nullified. Married hetero women who reach menopause would then have to fend for themselves in old age. That would save the US a bundle on claiming against their husbands Social Security account, and the government needs to cut costs!
Let also note that this pitiful excuse for a lawyer needs to deal with all those pregnant unwed and teenage mothers. What did he say about those? How would he deal with the women who will not reveal who the fathers are? Can the government force those unwed parents to marry? Will they outlaw divorce?
And if this anti-SSM lawyer is so good at seeing into the future, how come he did not rail against the worst president in history, “W”, being elected in 2000 and 2004? Why did he not make some noise about 9/11 and the Iraq war?
Why did not the plaintiff couples make their lawyer(s) show the anti-SSM lawyer out for the fool he is and all the lies, untruths, half-truths and mistakes he was touting. Cannot the media also step up to the plate and show the case for what it really is, and make sure the judges see the facts? Surely there is more to the story than one can argue in 30 minutes. Will these mid-western judges read the some 172-page California opinion and then also add other facts and truths to their argument? Will they be impartial and rule according to the facts as required by their state and the federal constitutions.
Who is the ultimate and final decision-maker in these cases? Surely not the people who are greatly influenced by the anti-SSM bigots and the religious nut cases! Why is it that all of the courts cannot see that one particular evil or bigoted brand (or even several brands) of doubtfully acceptable religions cannot trump a suspect minority or another more-accepting religion. What makes any one religion better than another? Who can be the judge of that?
Marriage is nothing more than a secular contract between two people. Denying two (even caring) people of the same sex to marry actually disallows any two people to enter into a contract. Entering into a contract (1. two people or 2. a person and a corporation) has been held as a basic civil right by the US Supreme Court for over 200 years. I just do not see how a legislature or the people of a state can be allowed to abridge this legal and ratified right. Something is fishy in Denmark and in Iowa and in California and in Florida and wherever else people allow have these kinds of laws.
I didn’t have chance to hear this one, as I did the California one. But if that is all they managed to convey in 30 minutes…its’ pitiful legals exposition. I do hope someone else can tell us that the attorneys were prepared with REAL legal arguments , not just newspaper headline comments.