Iowa Decency

With my traveling over the weekend - after the Equality Virginia event the boyfriend and I continued up to Charlottesville to visit some of my family who live there - I missed the opportunity to fully pursue some of my book marked news sights and failed to see the New York Times editorial on the Iowa gay marriage decison until this evening. The editorial notes Iowa's history of being progressive in matters concerning civil rights and also underscores the Court's finding that religion should not be allowed to exclude civil legal rights. The editorial is in sharp contrast to a reader column posted on the Des Moines Register that tries to rehash the same religious/natural law agruments the Iowa Supreme Court rejected. Here are some higlights from the NYT editorial:

*

Like the state’s earlier landmark civil rights cases — striking down slavery in 1839, for example, and segregation in 1868 and 1873 — the ruling on gay marriage by Iowa’s Supreme Court is a refreshing message of fairness and common sense from the nation’s heartland. A unanimous decision by the seven-member court on Friday approved marriage for couples of the same sex and brought the nation a step closer toward realizing its promise of equality and justice.

*

The new decision says marriage is a civil contract and should not be defined by religious doctrine or views. “We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further an important governmental objective,” wrote Justice Mark Cady, a Republican appointee. “The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification.”

*

The immediate impact of Iowa’s ruling was to make the failure to respect gay people’s freedom to marry, by courts and legislatures in states like New York, seem all the more shameful.

In contrast, the author of the Des Moines Register piece shows a total disdain for equality under the CIVIL laws as well as a total inability to separate religious belief from the civil laws - precisely the trait that the Iowa Supreme Court rejected:

*

In other words, the formation of a bodily union between two persons requires sexual complementarity between the two persons. Only a mated pair of one man and one woman can sexually complement one another; therefore, only that ordering can form a bodily union.

*

As a result, an understanding of marriage in line with reason is a marriage between one man and one woman. Our state should enshrine this principle into law because, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “Law is given for the purpose of directing human acts; as far as human acts conduce to virtue, so far does law make men good.”

*

Many supporters of traditional marriage act out of religious conviction. This is entirely appropriate because there are reasons why many great religions, including Christianity, teach that marriage ought to be between one man and one woman.

*

I would also question whether the author of the Register opinion piece has ever truly been in love. True love and "complimentarity" - in my view - are something that occurs on a soul to soul basis with the body only providing the outer shell of the soul.