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Now that Iowa’s Supreme Court has redefined marriage, we might want to get used to what that is going to look like:
(This “updating” of Grant Wood’s classic painting was created by a friend of WORLD’s.)
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back to top59 Comments to “American Gothic redefined in Iowa”
But on the bright side, that drab house in the background will be redecorated inside and out and will thus help prop up property values in the area!!! The final verdict? ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS!
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What’s right true and moral for you might not be right, true and moral for others. We cannot judge or impose our morality on the Iowa judges anymore than we can issue moral approval or condemnation on those who perpetrated the Tiananmen massacre. Rather we should just acknowledge that we’re all fellow passengers on this great big blue marble called Spaceship Earth. Live simply so that Iowa gay folks can simply live.
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#1,#2
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Hilarious!
Great comments, too.
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Two gay ethanol farmers walk into a bar…
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We got ceremonies
Right here in River City
And that starts with “C” and that rhymes with “G”
And that stands for GAY!
Go Iowa …
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This is quite appropriate especially since American Gothic was on display at the Des Moines Art Center up until last week. So now the ugly modern message of the updated painting will fit with the rest of the ugly modern art and messages in the rest of the Art Center.
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I like it! Not very imaginative, but still entertaining.
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It’s time for a secret vote of the people than the boot of a socialist court – who will soon likely be taking away the right of the people to vote by secret ballot toot suite…. Got to use some French in every post from now on.
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Well, as much as I am against gay marriage, I can’t find a legal or procedural reason to object to this ruling. Invoking the equal protection clause is reasonable, and if this issue is important enough to be exempt from that (it is), then the people of Iowa need to pass a constitutional amendment. If they can’t, then those Iowans who believe in the biblical definition of marriage will just have to tolerate open homosexuality the same way they tolerate other sins that aren’t illegal like pride and anger and sloth.
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This bothers me: “…anymore than we can issue moral approval or condemnation on those who perpetrated the Tiananmen massacre.”
I feel fine issuing moral condemnation on the people who rolled over a guy with a tank for seeking freedom. I feel fine issuing moral condemnation on the people who flew into the World Trade Center, too, as well as the way those same people beat and jail a 74 year old woman for asking two young men she’s known all their lives to buy her bread.
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Having visited the “American Gothic” house in Eldon, Iowa, I can tell you that the painting was not of a husband and wife (a common misconception), but of a father and daughter.
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John M.: Many Christians believe divorce is wrong and remarriage after divorce even more wrong. Yet, divorce is legal in America and so is remarriage, and Christians are not working up much of a sweat trying to change that.
What they will do is refuse to bless those marriages. In the Catholic church, divorced persons have to have the marriage annulled, and the church will do that only in cases that meet certain criteria. Other denominations handle it in different ways.
I do not see how gay marriage is any different. Not only is divorce just as much a violation of God’s ideal, it is FAR more common than same-sex unions will ever be.
So again I have to ask: why is this a huge issue and the other not? I am not saying, and please don’t respond as if I am, that churches have any obligation to accept divorce if their particular interpretation forbids them to. I am saying that they seem quite content to apply their religious values only to people seeking to marry in the church, and have no great concern about trying to change the civil law to reflect their religious interpretations.
What makes this issue so much worse than that one?
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Divorce doesn’t require us to make up new definitions of ancient institutions; homosexual marriage does. This is a very public change, not a private one. It creates a new definition of marriage that everyone has to accept by force, not even by vote.
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SteveG says,
I was too young to have a clear recollection of the church’s response when no-fault divorce started becoming law in more and more states, but even though I was young and I wasn’t a Christian, I do remember hearing some objections to it. I think, too, that the church was just beginning to wake up to the consequences in the culture of Christians not being engaged in what was happening in the public square. But it’s too late now for the church to publicly respond to the divorce culture, I think.
I’d be curious to know how the public responded back then to slippery slope arguments about the cultural decay that would follow the disintegration of the traditional family. I suspect they would have dismissed them, and that they probably did. If anyone had argued then about the kinds of things that would be acceptable today because the moral slide we were in, people would laughed and mocked. Now, those same people are yawning at “gay marriage.”
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Marriage is still a union between two persons. Same definition.
Due
Dos
Zwei
Deux
become
One
It was a matter of force before the court’s opinion and it will be a matter of force again when the opinion takes effect, but while the court considered the arguments, it was a matter of reason.
On the level of reason, your side failed to produce a good enough reason to limit marriage to persons of opposite sex. You didn’t have good enough reasons. Sorry.
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/20090403iowa-text.pdf
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12. Now that I look at it, she is a bit young for him.
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It was a matter of force before the court’s opinion…
That is a false statement. No force was required before the court’s decision precisely because it was known what the definition of marriage was until the court intervened. If no change was necessary, the courts intervention would not have been desired to FORCE the change.
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JOHN M #10 is reasonable. He’s opposed to homosexuality on theological grounds against which there can be no argument. Absolutely none. He understand that the Constitution grants every person equal protection of laws. He admits he would like to deny equal protection of laws to homosexuals.
Congratulations for being honest as well as reasonable, JOHN M. I think you will be useful.
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DJ: Divorce doesn’t require us to make up new definitions of ancient institutions; homosexual marriage does.
Sure it does. Marriage as an ancient institution has always been a lifelong covenant, with only one justification for dissolution — infidelity. And even then the case for remarriage after is sketchy.
The civil law started to change because people began to feel that maybe physical or emotional abuse, addiction and other situations were also suitable justifications. And eventually, that the state had no business deciding when and why people should end marriages.
The ancient institution has already been significantly redefined by that. (And in general I agree that it’s not been a net positive, but I also think that people should be able to end marriages if they or their children are getting beat up physically or verbally on a regular basis, something that is not endorsed in scripture.)
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You just weren’t aware of the force before, DJ, because it affected queers. But they have rights too. You shall suck it up. Console yourself with #10, and please join a movement for a Constitutional Amendment, and definitely join the Republican Party to it. Please! I might even send you a donation to your efforts.
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SteveG
Divorce, and the reasons for it, have not redefined marriage in any way. The ease of divorce has affected the duration of marriages, but not the definition of it. That took a judge, and such an important destruction should have at least required a vote. I would not have agreed with it any more than I do now, but I could at least know that it was a decision arrived at by relatively just means. That does matter.
Scroop
Homosexuals have no right to force their own views of marriage on the general public through the courts. Thanks for the offer of a donation, but please don’t send it to the Republican party. Send it to http://exodus.to/content/category/6/24/57/ — I think they will make better use of it.
Be well.
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The court’s ruling (and I did read it in it’s entirety), makes a clear statement that it is ruling only on civil marriage and that it is in now way interfering with the right of churches to marry or not marry any couple. It forthrightly upholds freedom of religion.
The court also rightly points out that there are churches and faiths on both sides of the marriage equality issue. It points out that it is not the role of the government to pick and choose which religion it’s going to favor.
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I will ask again. (So far it’s been ignored this go around.)
Why not allow civil union so people in homosexual relationships can have practical rights and access similar to the rights and access people in heterosexual relationships get? I am not sure the right to use the word “marriage” is a “civil right” but I think the right to visit a loved partner in a hospital more clearly is, as are rights to financial assets.
I will point out again, that if American was founded as a “Christian country,” (which I consider doubtful) the Christian founders should have taken more care to preserve it as a theocracy-like nation. Having failed to do so, it is too late in the day for them to save us from perdition.
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Random, I think everyone should have the right to decide who visits them in a hospital and who gets their stuff and their kids when they die. I’m not sure a civil union law is the answer though.
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“Invoking the equal protection clause is reasonable.”
No it isn’t; it is utterly irrelevant. Equal protection has always existed. The laws that restrict marriage to adult heterosexual couples of a certain age and no current marriages to other people apply equally to all individuals, regardless of their age, mental competency, sexual preferences, or current marriage status. Equal protection means that the same tests apply equally to each, not that each can redefine the meaning of words to eliminate disqualifying tests.
To invoke equal protection, the definition of marriage must first be stripped of the meaning it has had throughout history. The Iowa courts have overruled not just the legislatures that create laws, but has usurped the right of the people to define words for themselves. This Orwellian outrage is ludicrous in academia. In our courts it is tragic.
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KBells: A civil union law would solve it more efficiently than anything else. As it stands, if someone wants to leave their estate to their same-sex partner, a blood relative can contest it and, even if they don’t win, force the heir to spend a lot of money and time fighting.
Likewise, blood relatives can decide who can and cannot visit hospital patients, at least in cases where the patient is unconscious or otherwise too ill to speak up.
You’d have to change all the laws individually that affect the various things married couples take for granted, in every state. And you’d have to figure out, if the partners don’t have a legally-granted civil union to document their status, how to determine who your newly-changed laws include. (That is, if you want to change the hospital law so that unmarried partners of the patient get to visit even if the blood relatives object, how do you establish who that is?)
A civil union would be about the same as a civil marriage is now for heterosexuals, I think. It would confer to them the legal benefits of marriage, but, like heterosexual couples married by a judge, it wouldn’t convey the blessings of a community of faith.
It seems a compassionate compromise to me.
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SteveG. as I’ve said before, I wouldn’t have a problem with that as long discrimination laws allow photographers and caters and even restaurants owners who have moral problems with gay marriage to refuse to do gay ceremonies.
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I see a familiar pattern. Civil union laws are enacted. Everyone who wants to uphold normal 2 gender marriage says “Great! We’ve compromised.” But then some judge winds up saying civil unions arent equal to real marriages.
What do you say to the (indeterminate gendered person) holding the sign reading: “If we’re equal will you trade my civil union for your marriage?” Civil union laws are the camel’s nose under the tent here. Eventually someone will challenge even the civil union laws and the one thing civil union supporters were hoping to avoid (full-blown gay marriage) will be achieved by judicial fiat. I believe the Calif judges looked at the state’s civil union laws and said in essence, why stop here? What basis does the state have for not saying same sex marriage?
I’m thinking we will lose here cuz if all you’re considering are codes and other legislation apart from broader moral implications or cultural heritage, then you rule in favor of gay marriages and enjoy celebrity jurist fame.
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#24 Random
All civilizations have known that marriage is between a man and a woman regardless of the religion they practiced. Although it bears a slightly different face throughout history and cultures (divorce permitted in some cultures only to men, poligamy, etc.)—still, it’s one unique identifying feature is that it requires a male and female (at least 1 of each)–always.
Regarding civil unions, the homosexual community has shown (some even on this blog) that civil unions are nothing more than a stepping stone toward the destruction of this ancient, well-known man/woman definition of marriage. My state passed civil union laws and the ink was barely dry on the legislation before the homosexual community brought suit alleging that civil unions were intrinsicly discriminatory; an activist court overturned the law and unilaterally legalized homosexual marriage.
This in itself is reason enough NOT to support civil unions. They are open doors for the judiciary to overturn the will of the people regarding the fundamental and ancient institution of marriage.
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Other than the term, what is the difference between a civil union and a marriage in the eyes of the government?
And it is the eyes of the government we’re talking about here … the Constitution would not allow any law that requires religious bodies to accept same-sex unions over their moral objections. No priest or pastor is going to be required by law to perform a wedding ceremony for a same-sex couple.
There may be some gay-marriage supporters who think that churches should be forced to, but they will not prevail because the guarantee of free exercise of religion prevents it.
So whether it’s called civil union or marriage, it never will include the blessings of any religious body that doesn’t wish to give it. For the non-slippery slope example, look at the Catholic Church and divorced persons. They will marry divorcees only under certain circumstances, and have the right to refuse to marry any couple that doesn’t meet those criteria. No law could ever force them to violate their teaching on this matter.
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KBells: SteveG. as I’ve said before, I wouldn’t have a problem with that as long discrimination laws allow photographers and caters and even restaurants owners who have moral problems with gay marriage to refuse to do gay ceremonies.
I think business have the right to decline clients they don’t want to work with. The one photographer who got sued, if I remember right, didn’t just refuse to photograph a same-sex wedding. She initially accepted (knowing up front just what it was she was accepting), took their money, and then at the last minute, backed out, leaving the clients with very little time to hire another photographer.
If she’d just said up front that she wasn’t comfortable with it, when they still have plenty of time to shop around, there probably never would have been an issue.
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SteveG. but what about private businesses and charities? Will they be forced to accept same-sex unions over their moral objections.
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SteveG
Religion is irrelevant to the definition of marriage being between male and female. (see post #30) Marriage is one of the social institutions that have survived cross-culturally throughout history.
Like I said, experience has shown that civil unions are merely an invitation for activist judges to overthrow the will of the people (not to mention thousands of years of history) regarding the definition of this fundamental, public, social institution.
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Kbells,
Many of them do not even want civil unions. They want to redefine marriage until it is socially meaningless. Civil unions open the door to judicial activism.
As for the effects on private businesses and charities, it’s already happened. Catholic Charities is being forced out of Massachusetts because they won’t place children for adoption with homosexual couples.
Open the door if you want to, but the resulting flood is entirely predictable.
Be well.
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#12 John,
Interesting you should correct the misconception of this painting. The people in the painting being father and daughter – like many, I didn’t know that either.
Your observation, along with several other comments about why gays should be allowed legal marriage are cause for thought. Civilizations through the centuries have always recognized marriage to be a union between a man and a woman. In later centuries when marriages became a legal/civil arrangement as well as religious/spiritual covenant, the idea of marriage was not changed, just the legal documentation was added.
Now that gays desire to have marriage legally recognized for them – an alternative lifestyle to the centuries old tried and true one man/ one woman marriage relationship – what will stop the next wave of alternative lifestyles being recognized as acceptable therefore as legitimate relationships worthy of marriage? That picture of daughter and father being a marriage picture – that’s an alternative relationship that’s not acceptable or legal now. Why not? They don’t think it’s wrong. Marriage of one man to many women or vice versa, why not? That’s an alternative lifestyle – why not accept it and legalize it? The ones involved, they don’t think it is wrong. Why do we?
Society becomes a cesspool when there are no parameters of decency upheld. At what point do we recognize that accepting and legalizing alternatives is going in the wrong direction?
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Well, we’ve had marriage equality in Massachusetts for 4 years and none of the dire predictions by the anti-marriage equality folks have come true. No churches have been forced to marry anyone they didn’t want to. No church has been forced to recognize the marriage of a same sex couples. No ministers have been arrested for preaching that homosexuality is a sin. No one’s marriage has been devalued. There’s been no mass exodus from the state. No opposite gender marriages have been called off. No opposite gender couple has filed for divorce because their marriage was worthless.
What the arguments boil down to is, will we treat all citizens equally under the law or not? Conservative Christians want to segregate out gay people and deny them equal protection under the law. The Iowa Supreme Court has ruled that to be unconstitutional. Their ruling is sound and well reasoned.
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SteveG #32, where did you get that information?
I looked around a little bit. I did find this:
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/jan/08013004.html
The article says, “In their complaint the homosexual couple has sought for an injunction against Elane Photography that will forbid them from ever again refusing to photograph a same-sex ceremony. They have also requested attorney’s fees.” If the situation really is as you describe it, with the photographer intending to leave the couple high-and-dry just before the ceremony, then attorney’s fees could be appropriate. The requested injunction, though, seems to be just vindictive punishment, rather than righting a wrong done to the couple.
On the other hand, what if the couple had requested and received the photographer’s services for other, rather innocuous engagements such as a birthday party or something, and then at the last moment sprung the request for photography of the ceremony on the photographer? And then perhaps they and their supporters could have misrepresented the facts of the matter?
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Once marriage has been “redefined” using the protracted argument of the “equal protection clause”, what is there to prohibit the restriction of polygamy? Seriously, if your rebuttal is, “Well marriage is only between two consenting adults.” My response would then be, “Why just two?” Once marriage is redefined from the historical standard of “one man and one woman”, could not “equal protection” also include 3-4 consenting adults that are truly in love with each other? What legal argument would you have to say no?
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Matt: I’m just going on my memory of reading about the case when it happened. It’s been a while and I may well be mis-remembering.
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Jeff McBride asks; “Once marriage has been ‘redefined’ using the protracted argument of the ‘equal protection clause’, what is there to prohibit the restriction of polygamy?”
Nothing.
And even if only two same-sex consenting adults are allowed to marry in America (randomly limiting it to just two), then that can still include the adult mother of and adult daughter uniting in glorious matrimony for whatever reason(s) they see fit. It allows two blood brothers to be blissfully legally bound together in the holy bonds of matrimony.
When we sacrifice moral principle and virtue to pure selfishness, anything goes and soon everything is gone.
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I don’t buy any of the conservative arguments against gay marriage.
I, like Anlir, am from Massachusetts, and I don’t know anybody who has been affected in any way by gay marriage. The fact that gay marriage is going on is totally transparent to everyone except those directly involved.
Nobody is clamoring for additionally expanded marriage rights, and even if there where, I can’t imagine that they could muster the political support that the gay community can. Gays make up ~1.5% of our population. There are more gays than Jews in this country. What percentage of the population do you think want to marry their sons or daughters? I think 0.01% would be generous. It’s not going to happen any time soon.
Committed gay relationships have been publically acceptable in this country for years, in some places, for decades. Considering the greater public acceptance of gay relationships it’s almost inevitable that state supreme courts would be forced by their equal protection clauses to allow gay marriage. They are simply reflecting the evolving nature of equality.
Will the definition of marriage continue to change? Maybe, but first I think it will be necessary for a significant number of people beyond those seeking to change the definition to agree that the behavior in question is normal and worthy of being treated equally.
In my opinion, the real reasons conservatives want to deny gay marriage rights is that they don’t want the government to grant gay relationships the same status as heterosexual relationships. They fear people won’t be as willing to suppress their homosexuality.
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What I find extremely ironic is that it’s the conservatives who are arguing that if you allow gay marriage you MUST allow polygamist and incestuous marriages. I hope their arguments don’t come back to bite them in the butt.
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KWatson,
One should argue with logic and reason. We point out that if we allow gay marriage, then there is no reason to forbid any other union. Your argument against these other arrangements seems to be merely that there aren’t that many and they don’t have the political clout to accomplish their legal unions. So are you saying that rights derive from political clout? Are you saying to some woman who wants to marry her chimpanzee that she doesn’t have that right only because she doesn’t have the political clout? Her true love doesn’t matter, because there are so few women who want to marry chimps?
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Yes John, That’s what I’m saying. If the slippery slope was as slippery as conservatives say it is, than the history of marriage in this country would be very very different. A woman either has the right to marry a chimp or she doesn’t. It has nothing to do with gay marriage. It doesn’t follow that granting marriage privileges to gays means you have to grant them to chimp lovers as well. If a woman wants to marry a chimp she’ll have to go to court herself.
It’s your logic, not mine, that’s arguing for chimp marriages. If you really can’t think of any compelling public interest to deny chimp marriages, or incestuous marriages, or polygamist marriages, than you certainlly can’t have a problem with gay marriages.
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Equal protection means that the same tests apply equally to each, not that each can redefine the meaning of words to eliminate disqualifying tests.
No, equal protection means that we are persons before the law, and gender is not a legitimate basis for differential treatment. The law sees two persons in a marriage, there being no practical reason for the government to differentiate their sex(es).
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The “slippery slope” argument was put forward to try and stop inter-racial marriage. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now. Besides, one could use the “slippery slope” argument against any change.
What is compelling for people is the very real lives of their gay friends and family members. Fewer and fewer people can see any justification for maintaining legal and social discrimination against gay people. And courts are increasingly finding legal discrimination to be fundamentally at odds with the equal protection provisions of their constitutions.
The Iowa Supreme Court has long been at the forefront of things like freedom for black people, inter-racial marriage, voting rights, and women’s rights. They are to be commended once again.
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The law sees a male and a female in a marriage, just as it has historically in other cultures for hundereds—even thousands of years regardless of religious traditions. Homosexuals have no right to demand this definitional change to so fundamental an institution.
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At whatever point God sees fit to pour out His mercy on our nation.
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Catholic Charities had to end their long history of adoption services in Massachusetts because to continue, they would have to offer children for adoption to homosexual couples.
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Compelling to whom?
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NJLawyer (#11) – I’m pretty sure Sawgunner was writing “tongue in cheek” with his comment at #2.
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Ree #51, the courts of course.
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But of course we can have a problem with rejecting the shared wisdom of all societies throughout all of history in defining marriage just because the courts refuse to be persuaded by any reasons or arguments not to do so. Why do you regard the courts as equal to God that one can have no reasonable moral objection to what they decide? What a bizarre proposition, and I’m sure you’d quickly back away from it if the court’s opinion were not the same as yours.
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But of course we can have a problem with rejecting the shared wisdom of all societies throughout all of history…
As the Iowa Supreme Court pointed out in it’s ruling, just because “we’ve always done it that way” is no defense for continuing a practice. Times change, circumstances change, and people change. At one time segregation was considered right and Godly. Conservatives (and conservative Christians) defended it with all the vigor that they’re trying to defend the exclusion of gays from equal protection under the law. They insisted that God’s Word was absolutely final on the matter and that only a heretic would call for the equality of black people. Well, they were wrong – very wrong.
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People who live in states that have not yet added a constitutional amendment to protect the ancient historically and culturally tested male/female requirements of marriage should increase their efforts to do so while the choice is still theirs. Without these amendments activist courts have little to prevent them from pandering to homosexual demands that marriage be redefined just for them.
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For gay people, five years ago there were:
0 free states
50 slave state
Today there are:
3 free states
47 slave states
Vermont and New Hampshire are on the edge of becoming free states.
Progress may be slow, but as more states become adopt freedom the momentum will pick up. As President George Bush said, you can’t stop the march of freedom.
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There is no marriage equality in ANY state. Consenting adult polygamists cannot marry. Their definition of marriage is still illegal and banned.
Good question, John Denny at #44.
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I prefer the word “UNdefined” over “redefined” when it comes to the recent Supreme Court move. As someone who highly values his marriage and has worked to maintain it for 16 years, I am insulted by the handful of judges who have decided for everyone else that marriage, instituted and defined originally by God (Gen. 2:22-24; Prov. 18:22; Mat. 19:3-9) and accepted as a male/female union by nearly every society/culture/religion for thousands of years, is all wrong. We’ve removed the definition as it has always stood and are leaving it open to further reinterpretation for whatever union we feel fits. So what is marriage definition to be now? Do we really think that we’ve misinterpreted the Bible’s view on homosexuality and marriage all these years and have finally stumbled across the truth that God didn’t mean what sound doctrine has shown us for centuries? Have we really been doing it wrong by limiting marriage to its original blueprint after all? Where are you, standards?
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