Kansas voters enshrined traditional marriage in their state constitution a few years ago.  This was done to keep wacky judges from second-guessing the electorate as apparently happened in Iowa.

At the time, people on the left argued that Kansas didn’t need a constitutional ammendment, since gay marriage was already illegal and there were no legal cases challenging the law.  Looks like conservatives knew what they were doing after all.

As you said, Iowa is the Bible Belt.  Here is how this will play out:

1. Iowans wake up tomorrow and find out some nut-case judge is trying to cram gay marriage down their throat.

2. Conservative think-tanks bankroll an appeal and the matter works its way through the courts.

3. Before making it to the State Supreme Court, Iowans pass a consitutional ammendment banning gay marriage.

4. Republicans pick up a few seats in the 2008 Iowa state elections because conservatives are motivated to go to the polls.  Lord knows that conservatives aren’t motivated by the current slate of socialists competing for the GOP nomination, but banning gay marriage would get them to the ballot box.

That’s my prediction.  Feel free to bookmark it and call me out if I’m wrong.  I’m not too worried, though.

Are gay men conducting shotgun weddings so they can get blown, Daryl?  If not, I would say that “cramming gay marriage down their throat” is hyperbole.  But as you point out, hyperbole is what motivates voters, unfortunately.

You’d think Daryl would realize that if gay men were allowed to get married then a good chunk of the GOP would stop getting arrested for soliciting gay sex in public restrooms.

OK, that was a low blow (so to speak) but I had to say it.

Conservatives are afraid that if they had the legal option they’d all be walking in Pride parades with their hubby to hubby signs proclaiming “Jesus is Dead” and carrying their novels by Karl Marx and Doctor Spock.

After all, they already can’t do a damned thing about it when their little girls marry a black man beside seethe and proclaim “I’ve got a lot of friends,” and they’re already arrested for murdering godless abortionist baby-killers - I suppose for the more indignant among them it might occur that “just one more step” towards a civilized society might remove them from relevancy altogether and they’d have to catch up to the 21st century along with the other fundamentalists in the world.

This is very good news indeed and could lead to a larger precedent for removing gay marriage bans.  Hell maybe we can even get Consi to see the light!  Maybe our country will start to come to their senses after all.

Daryl’s right; this will be hugely motivating to the homophobic right. Next up will be images of gay farmers!  Hot gay sex in the equipment shed!

Of course the corn will still get harvested and made into ethanol.  In fact, life will go on pretty much as before only with a bit less injustice.  Maybe people will get used to it and wonder what the big deal was.

OK, that was a low blow (so to speak) but I had to say it.

As one represented by the GOPs current whipping-boy, I find nothing low about it. Personally, I just wish the boy would admit it to himself, mebby he’d be a little happier.

Hot gay sex in the equipment shed!

Yeah, but what’s the signal? Wave a hoe?

Daryl,

1. Iowans wake up tomorrow and find out some nut-case judge is trying to cram gay marriage down their throat.

So the concept of the Freudian slip is lost on you, eh? 

Next up will be images of gay farmers!  Hot gay sex in the equipment shed!

Does Mrs DoF know you’re going to these pages?

OK, that was a low blow (so to speak) but I had to say it.

Not low, appropriate for him, if he didn’t realise before then he needed to, and if he did, nothing lost

Does Mrs DoF know you’re going to these pages?

You mean… there’s stuff like that on the Interweb?!  No more paying for all those magazine subscriptions!!! 

Well, but it didn’t last long.

Damn. 

Gotta love this ironically-named fellow:

The flurry of activity in the courts prompted a quick response from some lawmakers. House Republican leader Christopher Rants called on Democrats, who hold a majority of seats in the Legislature, to respond.

‘‘The Democrats should call a special session immediately to take up such issues and to introduce a marriage amendment for Iowa’s constitution,’’ he said in a statement. ‘‘House Democrats need to start leading or get out of the way.’‘

Of course by “leadership” he means an amendment that would be satisfactory to his constituency but not necessarily to the Democrats’.

Well, but it didn’t last long.

This is unfortunate, to say the very least, but as we know from history, the fight for justice and equality is a long and embittered one. Mark my words, the day will come when federal and state bans on gay marriage will finally be abolished. In the meantime we have to keep standing up for equality in any way we can.

As one who grew up in IA I find it offensive that everyone jumps to the conclusion that “Iowa is the Bible Belt.”  You are clearly stereotyping and not at all familiar with Iowan politics.  To remind everyone, they voted for Gore in 2000 and Bush only won Iowa by 0.67% of the popular vote in 2004.  Iowa has consistently been one of the few liberal “strongerholds” in the Upper Midwest along with Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Hmmm… so theocrat, you’re saying in effect that belief in the Bible is incompatible with being liberal?

What makes a person republican is often similar to what makes a person christian

Zilch, of course not.  Iowa is not the Bible Belt.  The Bible Belt does not vote democrat and is much farther south.  The northern “border” of the Bible belt fades away somewhere in Missouri.  If people were aware of Iowan politics they wouldn’t have been as surprised and ready to shout precedent as they were.  If people were aware of Iowan politics they would have acted about as energetically as they would had this news come from New York or California.  Because Iowa is a flat state in the middle of nowhere and nothing spectacular happens there, Iowa gets lumped unfairly with the Bible Belt.  If the liberal snobs on the coastal states would get their lips off their asses long enough they might realize the midwest is not filled with backwards hicks but that they have quite a few allies over here.  The amount of unwarranted disrespect the midwest gets from the coastal states really grinds on a proud born and bred Midwesterner after awhile.

Every part of the country gets disrespected, Theo.  Californians are stereotyped as flaky sandal-wearing tree-hugging socialists.  When I lived in East Tennessee, people from Illinois all thought Johnson City was Dogpatch. People in Tennessee all thought that everyone in New York got mugged once a week.  Here in Illinois we get about as much respect as you do in Iowa.

It gets worse when you talk about other countries, too.

I guess I’m just saying; “welcome to the club.”  The best answer to stereotypes is to patiently answer them with a better picture, and of course not to fit into them.

(for anyone whom it may help) With disrespect:
Don’t let it get to you and don’t spread it yourself (even in retaliation), break the cycle
That is the only way it’s ever going to end

(I’m sick and tired of everyone being sick and tired with everyone else, I want everyone to be at peace.) Why does it always have to be a negative spiral? If you don’t endure this negative feeling then you’ll get an even more negative punishment (ie shunning)...etc, people also sometimes seem to use their free will to restrict the free will of others, through the threat of negativity

DOF I expect you do know what its like being a midwesterner and Les too.  It’s posts and comments like the above that reinforce my own life experience that people on the coasts are faster to make and believe bad stereotypes than other people elsewhere in the country (or at least faster than upper midwesterners).

Oh so its not true then, the reason the coasts are ‘blue’ is because they are waiting for the evacuation ships from the rest of the world?