Iowa: Gay Marriage Mecca? Oh! Of Course!

After taking a short vacation overseas, and thus being unable to blog, I’m back! And it looks like I have a lot of news to catch up on…

An internal battle has been ensuing about what to discuss first, since really quite a lot as happened over here while I was watching World Cup qualifying games in Holland, but this small piece from Ben Martin on Politico.com is impossible for me to ignore:

King warns of ‘gay marriage Mecca’

Western Iowa Rep. Steve King:

This is an unconstitutional ruling and another example of activist judges molding the Constitution to achieve their personal political ends. Iowa law says that marriage is between one man and one woman. If judges believe the Iowa legislature should grant same sex marriage, they should resign from their positions and run for office, not legislate from the bench.

Now it is the Iowa legislature’s responsibility to pass the Marriage Amendment to the Iowa Constitution, clarifying that marriage is between one man and one woman, to give the power that the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself back to the people of Iowa. Along with a constitutional amendment, the legislature must also enact marriage license residency requirements so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Mecca due to the Supreme Court’s latest experiment in social engineering.

Democrats, however, control the legislature, and their leaders welcomed the ruling.

Ok. 1) I support the right for homosexuals to marry as they please because I believe that personal freedoms and rights apply equally to all members of society, regardless of sexual orientation or anything else for that matter. You either believe in full equality or you don’t. Period. (And of course it’s worth pointing out that homosexuality occurs in nature, whereas our marriage laws were created by a bunch of guys.)

2) Are there any gay people in Iowa who are looking to get married? Is this a Brokeback Mountain kind of thing? Assuming that there isn’t a vast hidden rainbow-enrobed community, I don’t think Iowa has much to actually worry about from their own citizenry.

3) And as for Iowa as a potential “gay marriage Mecca.” It could happen….but I assume that most homosexuals would rather go to a state where they can marry while not worrying about being lynched by one of the most socially conservative constituencies in the country.

so, State of Iowa and Steve King: RELAX! Let’s say that gays start getting married in Des Moines. Best-case scenario: your state accepts their new position as one of the few moving towards greater respect for personal liberties and a true right to privacy. Worst-case scenario: the quality of food, fashion, shopping, the arts, etc in Iowa goes way up. OUCH.

Here’s the bottom line for me: In preface, though I do believe in a woman’s right to choose, I understand why others fervently disagree. They believe that somebody or something, depending on how you view it, is being irreparably harmed. They see abortion as murder and thus feel like this practice is not simply immoral, but akin to breaking one of the ten commandments and must stop. Again, I don’t agree, but the general anti-abortion view is not irrational.

But what about gay marriage? It doesn’t cause any irreparable harm to anyone or anything, except for potentially the traditional (and by that I mean post-Victorian) view of marriage, and even that argument is silly, both in general and in historical perspective. When gays get married nobody is hurt, let alone murdered, in the process, and there is no empirical evidence that allowing such unions is detrimental in any way to society as a whole. So, if you’re heterosexual, why do you even care?

And then again, if you are a really conservative Iowan (is that an oxymoron?) and just can’t give this whole gay marriage thing up, you can always take some comfort in the fact that there’s at least one segment of your population that definitely won’t be murdering fetuses….

Will David Frum Be Apologizing To Rush?

First, read Ben martin’s very good editorial about Rush’s sudden move to the forefront of the news cycle entitled Rush Job: Inside Dems’ Limbaugh Plan.

Now, take a look at this excerpt from Conservative David Frum’s latest opinion piece on NewMajority.com:

(This will not be my first time admitting that David Frum may have just hit the nail on the head. Blerg.)

President Obama and Rush Limbaugh do not agree on much, but they share at least one thing: Both wish to see Rush anointed as the leader of the Republican party. Here’s Rahm Emanuel on Face the Nation yesterday: “the voice and the intellectual force and energy behind the Republican party.”

What a great endorsement for Rush! (And we know Rush is fond of compliments – listen to his loving account in his CPAC speech of the birthday lunch given him by President Bush just before Inauguration Day.)

But what about the rest of the party? Here’s the duel that Obama and Limbaugh are jointly arranging:

On the one side, the president of the United States: soft-spoken and conciliatory, never angry, always invoking the recession and its victims. This president invokes the language of “responsibility,” and in his own life seems to epitomize that ideal: He is physically honed and disciplined, his worst vice an occasional cigarette. He is at the same time an apparently devoted husband and father. Unsurprisingly, women voters trust and admire him.

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

And in case some of you can’t quite picture who David Frum is, here’s a clip of him bitch slapping Rachel Maddow in one of the most awkward cable news moments I’ve ever had the displeasure of witnessing: