One year after the Iowa Supreme Court released its unanimous ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, those who want to ban gay marriage have made little visible progress.
Republican legislators tried to force debate on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in both the 2009 and 2010 sessions of the Legislature. Those efforts failed. Local and national activists worked on behalf of a midterm legislative candidate who was firmly against marriage for gay and lesbian couples. That failed as well.
Now activists are turning their eyes to this year’s fall elections in hopes of shifting the balance away from a Democratic majority that has rebuffed efforts to bring a constitutional amendment before voters.
“I will not allow discrimination to be put into the Iowa Constitution on my watch,” said Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs.
Same-sex marriage foes are hoping to put an end to majority leadership by Gronstal and Speaker of the House Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque.
Democrats hold a 56-44 majority in the House and a 32-18 majority in the Senate. To win majorities, Republicans would need to sweep the 2010 state elections.
All three Republican candidates in the governor’s race have stated support in varying degrees for banning same-sex marriage. Democrat Gov. Chet Culver, who is unopposed in the June primary, is on the other side of the issue. He recently praised the Legislature for not advancing a constitutional amendment measure.
Gronstal said he doesn’t believe the Republicans will take control of both chambers of the Legislature. Even if they do, he said, it would likely be years before the issue came before voters.
A constitutional amendment must pass two separate general assemblies of the Legislature before coming before voters. That couldn’t happen until 2014.
While candidates battle it out, political activists both in and out of Iowa will try to influence the elections.
The Iowa Family Policy Center Action, a nonprofit organization based in Pleasant Hill, Iowa, will send information to its members urging support of certain candidates, and it will also contribute money to those campaigns, said spokesman Bryan English.
The National Organization for Marriage also plans to get involved in key state races, said its executive director Brian Brown. Brown wouldn’t detail specific plans, but said the New Jersey-based group could run television advertisements, as it did in Republican Stephen Burgmeier’s unsuccessful attempt to win a House seat in southeast Iowa in a special September election.
Same-sex marriage foes won’t be the only ones getting involved. The political action committee of the gay rights group One Iowa will be lending support to “fair-minded candidates,” said spokesman Brad Clark in Des Moines.
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