Tag Archives: Iowa

Marriage equality activists will gather at 6:30pm tonight in NYC’s Union Square to react to the decisions by the Iowa Supreme Court and Vermont’s House of Representatives. The Iowa decision is expected to be posted online here by 9:30am Eastern time. Vermont’s House is expected to formalize last night’s vote sometime in mid-afternoon. Join the Facebook group The Power here.

Tomorrow the Iowa Supreme Court will issue its decision on marriage equality. The case involves six same-sex Iowa couples who sued Polk County Recorder Timothy Brien in 2005 after his office denied them marriage licenses. The lawsuit argued that it would be unlawful to ban same-sex couples from marriage based on the equal protection and due process guarantees of the …

Tomorrow the Iowa Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. The case, Varnum vs. Brien, could make Iowa the first state in the Midwest to legalize same-sex marriage. Other high-court decisions that favor gay rights advocates have come from traditionally liberal coastal states, including California, Massachusetts and Connecticut. “This is the heartland …

Check out this incredible shot of a tornado touching down in Iowa as caught by local woman Lori Mehman. Somehow nobody was killed. And down in Fort Lauderdale our own Father Tony caught a gorgeous shot of a waterspout just off the coast.

Yesterday the appropriately named Iowa House Minority Leader Christopher Rants failed in his attempt to force the state legislature to vote on a proposed amendment banning same-sex marriage. Rants tried a procedural vote that would have moved the measure, House Joint Resolution 8, out of committee and before the full House for a possible debate. Rants’ maneuver failed on a …

Several hundred Iowans gathered at their state capital yesterday in a “prayer walk” against gay marriage. The attendees are demanding that legislators launch an effort to amend the state constitution. The issue of gay marriage gained attention last August when District Judge Robert Hanson ruled that Iowa’s marriage law is unconstitutional. He ordered the Polk County recorder to permit same-sex …

As mentioned several posts down, yesterday an Iowa judge struck down that state’s Defense of Marriage Act. Wasting no time, two Iowa men were married on their front lawn this morning. But at 11am, after 20 gay couples had filed for marriage licenses, the same judge issued a verbal stay of his order, pending the appeal of his decision to …

An Iowa judge struck down that state’s Defense of Marriage Act today, ruling it unconstitutional. Lambda Legal and Iowa’s former counsel general represented six couples denied marriage licenses in 2005, arguing that under equal access and due process guarantees in Iowa’s state constitution, the couples should not have been barred from marrying. The Iowa Civil Liberties Union and others filed …