Hawkeye for the gay guy

Good new gay community, a state supreme court has ruled that same-sex marriage is legal. That state is....Iowa? Rural Iowa? Heartland Iowa? The Iowa that's in America? We are talking about that Iowa, right, not some French island of Iowa in the Carribean? Well I'll be damned.

In an unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the right of same-sex couples to marry. The court, which was reviewing a district court decision allowing six gay couples to marry, found that “limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution”:

In a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court today held that the Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.

The decision strikes the language from Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman. It further directs that the remaining statutory language be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage.

Iowa becomes the fourth state to legalize gay marriage and if the hysterical reactions of Iowa State Senate Republicans are any indication, it will become the second state to try to overturn that court ruling through a constitutional amendment. So there's that. But still, gay marriage and not civil unions or some such watered down version of rights, was viewed as constitutionally valid in a Midwest state's Supreme Court. Well done, Hawkeye State. We'll probably have to rescind the kudos after you codify discrimination into your Constitution, lest the gays take over the corn industry. But still, who would have thought? Iowa.