IA Supreme Court: Excluding same sex partners from civil marriage is unconstitutional

Good news today from the Iowa Supreme Court: In a unanimous decision the court ruled that the state's ban on same sex marriages violated the equal protection clause. The original lawsuit was filed in 2005 challenging Polk County's denial of marriage licenses to six couples. A lower court found that the denials were unconstitutional and this ruling by the Iowa Supreme Court upholds that lower court ruling.

The case is called Varnum v. Brien and you can see the full decision in PDF form here.

According to a Huffington Post article, it is unlikely that the Polk County Attorney's office does not plan to ask for a rehearing, and according to John Sarcone, the Polk County Attorney, the decision can't be challenged in the courts by same sex marriage opponents because they have no legal standing, and the case does not raise any federal issues.

It sounds like marriage may be secure in Iowa in a few weeks. Of course opponents are furious, asking if this "perversion" is allowed what will be next, and no doubt they are already lobbing for an amendment to the Iowa constitution.

According to the anti same sex marriage Alliance Defense Fund's DOMA Watch, thirty states have amendments defining marriage as exclusively one-man+one-woman. Ten others have legislation that ban same-sex marriage. Iowa was one of those 10, and now it's ban has been declared unconstitutional.

This is an issue that ultimately needs to be settled at the federal level. Marriage should not be a state-by-state prerogative. I should not have to worry, if I move from one state to another, that my marriage will no longer be valid because of the gender of my partner. The Defense of Marriage Act needs to be repealed and the US Supreme Court needs a case like the Loving v. Virginia in which arguments can be made that prohibiting marriage based on gender is as unconstitutional as prohibiting marriage based on race.