The bad news: The Republican Governor of Vermont, Jim Douglas, promptly vetoed it, as he'd promised in advance to do. This sort of thing calls to mind the Southern Governors who fought tooth and nail to preserve segregation fifty years ago. Douglas will look almost as bad in retrospect as Orval Faubus and his ilk.
There's still hope, though, as the Congress will vote tomorrow on overriding the Governor's veto and making gay marriage legal in the fourth of our fifty states.
You probably know that Vermont took the lead in allowing Civil Unions in this country back in 2000, when the state Congress passed a bill that former Governor Howard Dean signed into law. Hopefully, the state will soon join Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Iowa in leading the way once again. If they do, and if the California Supreme Court overturns Prop 8 as well, that would mean that a full 10% of the states in this country would have legalized Same Sex Marriage!
Speaking of Iowa, their Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of legalizing gay marriage last week, has actually been way ahead of the curve on many social issues over the past one hundred and sixty years, as Historian Linda Kerber has pointed out:
• In 1839, 26 years before the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, the Iowa Supreme Court refused to recognize a contract that enslaved a man.
• In 1851, the Iowa Legislature removed legal constraints on interracial marriage; the U.S. Supreme Court would not rule that anti-miscegenation laws are a denial of equal protection until 1967.
• In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools are a denial of equal protection of the laws.
• In 1873, nearly a century before the U.S. Supreme Court made a similar ruling in 1964, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that discrimination in access to public accommodations is a denial of equal protection of the laws. That case, brought by Emma Coger, who was thrown off the first-class dining table on a steamboat crossing from Keokuk to Quincy, Ill., deserves to be much better known.
• And in 1949, the Iowa Supreme Court again insisted that discrimination in access to public accommodation is a denial of equal protection of the laws in response to a sit-in at a downtown Des Moines lunch counter that had refused to serve black customers.
Who knew? Go Iowa!
Who knew? Go Iowa!
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