Speaking of Friday love...

how 'bout that radical Iowa Supreme Court?

Imagine those heartlanders buying the old equal protection argument**, no more special rights and privileges for the heterosexual families. You offer civil marriage rights to some, you can't discriminate against offering the same to others solely based on gender.

And no need for the separate-but-equal "civil unions are good enough for your kind for now" liberal comfort blanket argument that good heterosexual people currently enjoying special privileges can cling to in distinguishing themselves from the bile bigots. I always saw that as too easy an out, just like the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell nonsense that discriminates against some servicemembers on the job.

Afterall, it's easy today to be against involuntary racial segregation, but look at how many good people were content to live that way for so long, never considering how their passivity and personal contentedness with the status quo contributed to the long wait for justice.*

3 down, 47 to go!
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*

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

Freedom
Is a strong seed
Planted In a great need.
I live here, too.
I want freedom
Just as you.

** From the opinion's conclusion:

We are firmly convinced the exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the institution of civil marriage does not substantially further any important governmental objective. The legislature has excluded a historically disfavored class of persons from a supremely important civil institution without a constitutionally sufficient justification. There is no material fact, genuinely in dispute, that can affect this determination.

We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law. Faithfulness to that duty requires us to hold Iowa’s marriage statute, Iowa Code section 595.2, violates the Iowa Constitution. To decide otherwise would be an abdication of our constitutional duty. If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded.

And more, for those who would argue that gays and lesbians currently do have the right to marry:

"It is true the marriage statute does not expressly prohibit gay and lesbian persons from marrying; it does, however, require that if they marry, it must be to someone of the opposite sex. Viewed in the complete context of marriage, including intimacy, civil marriage with a person of the opposite sex is as unappealing to a gay or lesbian person as civil marriage with a person of the same sex is to a heterosexual. Thus, the right of a gay or lesbian
person under the marriage statute to enter into a civil marriage only with a person of the opposite sex is no right at all. Under such a law, gay or lesbian individuals cannot simultaneously fulfill their deeply felt need for a
committed personal relationship, as influenced by their sexual orientation,and gain the civil status and attendant benefits granted by the statute. Instead, a gay or lesbian person can only gain the same rights under the 31
statute as a heterosexual person by negating the very trait that defines gay and lesbian people as a class—their sexual orientation. In re Marriage Cases, 183 P.3d at 441. The benefit denied by the marriage statute—the status of civil marriage for same-sex couples—is so “closely correlated with being homosexual” as to make it apparent the law is targeted at gay and lesbian people as a class."