Iowa Lawmakers: Legalize Discrimination Against Married Gays

The push by anti-gay lawmakers in Iowa to strip same-sex families of their currently-existing marriage rights has already gone well past the issue of marriage, with a proposed constitutional amendment seeking to deprive gay and lesbian couples not only of legal marriage, but also of any other form of legal recognition, such as domestic partnerships or civil unions.

But the story got stranger, and more alarming, with the introduction of a bill in the Iowa House that would make it legal for businesses and religious groups to deny goods and services to married couples if the vendor disagrees with their marriage.

The broadly worded proposal is a response to the legality of same-sex marriages in the state, which extended family parity to gays and lesbians in 2009. But because the bill states that discrimination against married couples would be legal for anyone whose "sincerely held religious beliefs" are offended by a marriage, it could easily be applied to mixed-race couples, unions between individuals of different faiths, or a family in which one spouse was previously married and then obtained a divorce, noted columnist Kathie Obradovich in the Feb. 9 edition of the head|Des Moines Register.

Opponents of full legal parity for sexual minorities and their families were emboldened by a successful campaign to oust several state Supreme Court justices who found in 2009 that gay and lesbian families should be allowed to marry under the provisions in the state constitution. The ruling was unanimous, but only three of the justices--Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, David Baker, and Michael Streit--came up for a retention vote in November's elections. Local anti-gay activists, with help from out-of-state organizations, mounted a successful push to replace those justices. The justices themselves chose not to counter with a campaign of their own.

Anti-gay group the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) had vowed to see the justices removed, and predicted that their ouster would serve as a warning to other judges around the nation. NOM and other out-of-state interests poured at least $1 million into Iowa in the effort to unseat the justices, while groups supporting the justices raised $200,000. The next retention vote affecting a Supreme Court justice will take place in 2012, when David Wiggins' term expires; the remaining three justices, Brent Appel, Mark Cady, and Daryl Hecht, will face retention votes in 2016.

The measure legalizing denial of goods and services, if passed, could take effect immediately, whereas a constitutional amendment could only go before voters after being approved by lawmakers in two consecutive sessions. The putative reason for the bill is to protect religiously affiliated organizations, but the Supreme Court decision that legalized civil marriage equality contained a guarantee that churches would not have to grant religious marriage services, Obradovich noted.

Even the Iowa Catholic Conference claims not to be in favor of the bill's potential to inflict legal discrimination on heterosexual couples whose marriages might offend some people's religious beliefs, according to the group's Tom Chapman. Even so, however, the Iowa Catholic Conference stands behind the bill in its current form.

The bill not only offers a legal means of discriminating against married couples to religious groups; it offers the same license to small businesses in general, wrote Obradovich, who envisioned a landlord suddenly able to toss same-sex renters out of their home for being gay under the law's provisions. "Voters who agree in principle that judges shouldn't have the final word on defining marriage may well balk at denying housing or education to their gay neighbors," the columnist observed.

Obradovich recognized that even more potentially disastrous side effects might emanate from the bill--consequences that would affect everyone. "It may sound reasonable that a small business should be able to choose its customers," Obradovich wrote. "But some business owners rely on anti-discrimination laws to shield them from community pressure to turn away segments of their clientele. In towns where no store would dare open on Sunday, business owners' religious credentials might face unwanted scrutiny. Their choice to welcome all customers might be professional suicide."

The proposed constitutional amendment goes too far all by itself in specifically denying gay and lesbian families domestic partnerships or civil unions, Obradovich wrote, noting that a majority of Iowans--including those opposed to full family parity before the law--think that same-sex families should have some means of legal recognition.

The measure drew opprobrium from Republican lawmaker State Rep. Richard Anderson, the Associated Press reported on Feb. 9. Anderson, who is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said that he would not allow the bill to proceed to deliberation or to a vote. Obradovich acknowledged Anderson's words. "But just bringing the measure to subcommittee does some damage," she wrote. The House has already approved the proposed constitutional amendment; the columnist speculated that the extremism of the proposed bill could have the effect of discrediting the amendment.

The Iowa state Senate has indicated that it will not advance the proposed amendment this year or in 2012. A similar amendment, Proposition 8, yanked then-existing marriage rights from gay and lesbian families in California in 2008. That amendment is currently under challenge in the courts. One federal court has already found Proposition 8 to be in violation of the United States Constitution. California families who married before voters narrowly approved Proposition 8 after a harrowing and divisive campaign remain legally married; those who did not marry during the six-month window of legal marriage equality in California can still access legal recognition in the form of domestic partnerships.

Rhode Island and Maryland are currently considering marriage equality legislation. Hawaii is deliberating civil unions>, despite a similar bill having been vetoed by then-Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican, last year. The current governor of Hawaii, Neil Abercrombie, a Democrat, has said that he will sign the civil unions bill if it reaches his desk.

Five states currently permit gays and lesbians to marry. So does the District of Columbia. A few states, including New York, honor marriages granted to same-sex families elsewhere, though they do not provide marriage equality themselves. Six states extend an array of rights and protections to same-sex families in the form of civil unions or similar legally recognized relationships.