Some thoughts on the Iowa Supreme Court decision:

(1) Four state supreme courts have now mandated allowing same-sex couples to marry: Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, and Iowa. The latter three have come down in the past year.

(2) Of these, the Iowa opinion has the most extensive discussion of the religious aspect of the debate, as far as I can recall. It’s added almost as a postscript — see pages 63-67. The court says that religion is not relevant to the debate. In fact (as Andy and others will be happy to read), the court points out that there are religious groups and people who support same-sex marriage. The whole section is worth reading for a good explanation of why religious arguments have no place in a secular debate.

(3) Among its arguments, Polk County put forth one of the stupidest rationales I’ve seen for banning same-sex marriage (pp. 60-63): the conservation of state resources. As the court phrases the county’s argument, “couples who are married enjoy numerous governmental benefits, so the state’s fiscal burden associated with civil marriage is reduced if less people are allowed to marry.” (Fewer, not less! Sigh…) For example, since married couples get tax benefits, allowing same-sex couples to marry would deprive the state of tax revenue.

But as the Iowa Supreme Court says, “Excluding any group from civil marriage — African-Americans, illegitimates, aliens, even red-haired individuals — would conserve state resources in an equally ‘rational’ way. Yet, such classifications so obviously offend our society’s collective sense of equality that courts have not hesitated to provide added protections against such inequalities.” Additionally, the court states, “Indeed, under the County’s logic, more state resources would be conserved by excluding groups more numerous than Iowa’s estimated 5800 same-sex couples (for example, persons marrying for a second or subsequent time).”

One wonders if the county’s heart was really in this argument or if they were just feeling desperate.

(4) As for why civil unions would not be good enough, the court states (p. 68): “Iowa Code section 595.2 is unconstitutional because the County has been unable to identify a constitutionally adequate justification for excluding plaintiffs from the institution of civil marriage. A new distinction based on sexual orientation would be equally suspect and difficult to square with the fundamental principles of equal protection embodied in our constitution.”

The court doesn’t explain it any further. It basically says, if there’s no reason to prevent same-sex couples from getting married, then let them get married — there’s no need for this civil union nonsense. The Massachusetts court went into much greater depth in its special statement about this distinction, but that was in response to a specific question from the Massachusetts senate. Neither of the parties in Iowa asked about civil unions, so there was no need for the Iowa court to say much about it.

I’m still embarrassed that Iowa has gone where New York and New Jersey didn’t go. But it shows how interesting our federal system of government is, where states work out so many of these issues for themselves. The patchwork quilt gets patchier!