The Strategic Value Of Civil Unions In Iowa

Barely a month after Proposition 8's narrow passage in California ended marriage equality in that state, the front in the nationwide struggle for gay rights has shifted to Iowa.

On Tuesday, the Iowa Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a legal challenge to the state's legislative prohibition on same-sex marriage. And when the justices ultimately make their decision, the eyes of the nation will be focused here. This will provide Iowans an historic opportunity to show our fellow Americans the true nature of our state.

Because the Supreme Court's judgment will be exclusively the result of the legal opinions of a majority of its members, attempting to predict how it will resolve the case is little more than a dressed-up guessing game. Thus, rather than speculating whether Iowa will soon join Massachusetts and Connecticut in affording gays and lesbians the same basic rights that most heterosexuals take for granted, we will suggest the course of action we believe the court should take.

As we have made abundantly clear in the past, we believe strongly that achieving true equality under the law for gays and lesbians throughout the United States is one of the defining civil-rights issues of our time. Ideally, every jurisdiction in the country would mandate full marriage equality tomorrow. But this is not an ideal world. So, purely as a matter of pragmatism, we must temper our fierce idealism with our clear-headed knowledge of empirical political reality.

Though we harbor no doubts whatsoever whether gays and lesbians are entitled to every legal right possessed by heterosexuals or that a core purpose the American judicial system is to protect all such minorities and their rights from the tyranny of the majority, it is nonetheless crucial for us to take the opinions of Iowa's citizenry into account. To be clear, the recognition of fundamental human rights ought never be subject to majority veto. But, as Proposition 8's passage in California so rudely reminded us, existing political and legal frameworks often allow for exactly that sort of disturbing outcome.

So what do Iowans think about marriage equality? The results of a recent poll conducted through the UI give us a pretty good idea.

First, the bad news: Only 28 percent of registered Iowa voters currently favor the legalization of gay marriage.

However, there's also some very good news: An additional 30 percent of registered voters in the state favor civil unions that would provide gays and lesbians with all of the legal benefits of marriage so long as the word "marriage" is reserved for heterosexuals. With only 32 percent of Iowans who are registered to vote opposing both gay marriage and civil unions, it's clear that a strong majority of Iowans are open to granting legal recognition to gay and lesbian couples.

To a certain extent this 30 percent disparity is frustrating. There simply aren't any good arguments in favor of such a "separate but equal" system. Some people harbor the misconception that state recognition of gay marriages would alter religious institutions' rights to decide based on their own criteria which couples they choose to provide with religious marriage ceremonies. This no doubt plays some role in persuading more than half of Iowans who support civil unions to oppose referring in state documents to such unions as marriages, but the primary explanation for the disparity is probably much simpler. Merely as a result of a sort of intuitive conservatism, many older Iowans seem to be uncomfortable using the word "marriage" to refer to a union that wouldn't have traditionally warranted that label. It's not bigotry so much as force of habit.

Rather than risking the sort of backlash that followed the California Supreme Court's decision to grant full marriage equality, the Iowa Supreme Court should be sensitive to the sensibilities of those Iowans who for whatever reason remain hung up on a single, simple word. Regardless of the details of its ruling, the Iowa Supreme Court should require the state government to grant gay and lesbian couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. But it should hold off on insisting that such unions be labeled marriages. Doing so would substantially isolate and weaken the social conservatives who will no doubt attempt to use any ruling that advances gay rights as a means of raising money and turning out voters at the polls.

Iowa's Constitution is much more difficult to amend than California's, requiring both legislative and popular approval over a period of several years. But even if there are significant barriers to marriage-equality opponents being able to override a court ruling allowing gay marriage in the state, we must not be overconfident that they will be unable to overcome those barriers. The damage such an outcome would cause far outweighs the value of one single, simple word.

(Cross-posted at the DI's main site.)

Channeling Orwell, King Claims Only Republicans Champion Freedom

Republican Rep. Steve King, who represents Iowa's 5th District, over the weekend added yet another absurd statement to his long list of ludicrous contentions.

Speaking at a campaign event in Sioux City on Oct. 25, King repeated what has become the Republican mantra in these final, frenzied days before the election: Sen. Barack Obama is a socialist. The Iowa congressman even insisted that many other Republicans aren't going far enough with this line of attack.

"When you take a lurch to the left, you end up in a totalitarian dictatorship," the Iowa Independent reported that King said. "There is no freedom to the left. It's always to our side of the aisle."

Apparently, King would have us believe that electing Obama will represent such an extreme change in American government that we won't merely wind up with a bloated French-style welfare state but rather, a headlong dive into Stalinism. There's nothing new about a politician such as King throwing some red meat to a highly partisan crowd, but the seriousness of his accusations, especially when considered alongside their obvious falsity, makes his remarks truly beyond the pale. Though we have severely criticized King several times in the past, we feel compelled to once again publicly denounce his bizarre extremism.

Ideologues who stray too far into the fringes of the left or right often tend to lose their respect for liberty. To assert that only those on the left are ever guilty of such excesses is to ignore history. For every Mao Zedong or Joseph Stalin, there is an Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini. Disregard for human rights and individual freedoms is the problem in such cases, not differences in the details of fiscal policy. Countries such as France, Germany, and even the United Kingdom are far more socialistic than the United States, but none of them are even remotely close to being totalitarian dictatorships. King's pedantic slippery-slope argument cannot survive even superficial scrutiny.

Despite being utterly devoid of truthfulness, King's assertion that electing Democrats could lead to the end of democracy or capitalism in America is actually less insulting to the average voter's intelligence than is his shamelessly Orwellian claim that freedom can only be found on his side of the aisle.

The word "Orwellian" is particularly apt in this case because King, whether he realizes it or not, has shown himself to be a proponent of doublethink. This concept originates from George Orwell's classic novel 1984, which tells the story of a man struggling to find freedom in a world dominated by totalitarian regimes.

In the novel, Orwell defined doublethink as follows: "To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies."

Thus, even though King froths at the mouth about how the Democrats are out to take away Americans' liberties, he himself strongly supported all of George W. Bush's policies that actually had that effect. He faithfully backed the president in both passing and renewing the USA Patriot Act as well as in granting retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that engaged in illegal spying on Americans. On all of the greatest civil-liberties issues of our time, King has been on the wrong side.

Talk in favor of freedom is cheap. And talking about freedom is virtually King's only connection to the concept. Attempting to scare Iowans into believing that a President Obama would obliterate what is left of America's core liberties after having personally voted in favor of the laws that have eroded those liberties is a paradigmatic example of doublethink in action.

We urge Iowans to help end King's tenure as the state's most embarrassing public figure. Support Democrat Rob Hubler's attempt to unseat this despicable, demented demagogue. Go to Hubler's website to learn about what you can do: http://www.hublercongress.com/.

(Cross-posted at the Daily Iowan's main site.)