The Salt Lake Tribune reports that the parent, who remains unidentified for privacy reasons, submitted their challenge on Dec. 11 along with an eight-page list of passages from the Bible that they found to be offensive and worth reviewing.
“Incest, onanism, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, dildos, rape, and even infanticide,” the parent wrote in their request. “You’ll no doubt find that the Bible, under Utah Code Ann. § 76-10-1227, has ‘no serious values for minors’ because it’s pornographic by our new definition.”
Well my media break ended early because I have important news for y’all. Iowa has two bills introduced today to try to make gay marriage illegal in the state. We can kind of use this as leverage for making gay marriage federally legal through Supreme Court. It is going to be rough for us gay Iowans. We were the third state to legalize gay marriage and now THIS BULLSHIT?!
Gays in other states please stand with us. Use your voices. We need to put this fire out, it threatens all our progress. They can’t take from us there rights we and our predecessors fought for.
I love y’all. Let’s fight in the name of love. I hate that our fight isn’t over. But with all this shit against our trans brothers and sisters, against everything they use to divide our community, we need solidarity as much as we always have. I’ll use my voice where I can. Please speak out with me. One bad group of people can be outweighed when all their enemies stand together.
Thanks for the alert. I had not seen this in the news yet.
Now I am so upset I need to log off and take a walk.
Thanks for adding the article (I hate looking up news). I found out an hour before I posted I think. Read through both bills only briefly enough to verify what they were about. The person who alerted me stressed the importance of a positive federal outcome (but that it will take activism…lots of it).
After all the progress we fucking thought we made. It’s a shame how Iowan republicans have turned for the worst. They used to have values grounded in SOME human rights. Now they’re taking it away. Too many important groundbreaking human rights legislations have been taken away from us.
Section 1. The following amendment to the Constitution of the State of Iowa is proposed:
Article I of the Constitution of the State of Iowa is amended by adding the following new section:
Sec. 26. Marriage. In accordance with the laws of nature and nature’s God, the state of Iowa recognizes the definition of marriage to be the solemnized union between one human biological male and one human biological female.
Sec. 2. REFERRAL AND PUBLICATION. The foregoing proposed amendment to the Constitution of the State of Iowa is referred to the general assembly to be chosen at the next general election for members of the general assembly, and shall be published as provided by law for three months previous to the date of that election.
EXPLANATION
The inclusion of this explanation does not constitute agreement with the explanation’s substance by the members of the general assembly.
This joint resolution proposes an amendment to the Constitution of the State of Iowa relating to marriage specifying “In accordance with the laws of nature and nature’s God, the state of Iowa recognizes the definition of marriage to be the solemnized union between one human biological male and one human biological female.”
The resolution, if adopted, would be published and then referred to the next general assembly (91st) for adoption before being submitted to the electorate for ratification.
And my comments…
The state constitution is purposely hard to amend. This proposal would have to be approved by the current legislature and again by the next legislature in 2025 or 2026 before being placed on a ballot in a general election.
Presently this amendment would have no effect. The US Supreme Court ruled in the Obergefell case (2015) that everyone in the United States has the right to enter a same-sex marriage. But if the Supreme Court later overturns Obergefell, then this amendment would be valid law, just like the anti-abortion trigger laws that several states enacted before Roe was overturned.
Note the explicit religious justification. It doesn’t help that they used Deist terminology (“nature’s God”) instead of Christian terminology. A plain reading of the 1st Amendment to the US constitution should rule this out. However, today’s Supreme Court and Republican Party think that religious freedom means different things depending on who you are and which religion you have.
Note also that the proposed definition of marriage does not say anything about a minimum age or about consent, nor even about not being married to someone else.
The federal Respect For Marriage Act, which Congress passed last year, does not require any state to offer same-sex marriage but does require every state to recognize marriages performed in other states. However, Iowa Republicans have a plan for that too. House File 508 talks about marriage being a sacred religious sacrament and therefore no resident of Iowa can be compelled to recognize same-sex marriages. It does not say anything about opposite-sex marriages that were performed without a religious ceremony. It specifically calls out the Respect For Marriage act as unenforceable in Iowa, setting us up for a new nullification crisis.
My readers outside Iowa won’t know or care about our state legislators. But I like to list the names of the responsible people for my own future reference. The christofascists who introduced HJR 8 are Brad Sherman (Williamsburg), Luana Stoltenberg (Davenport), Mark Cisneros (Muscatine), Helena Hayes (New Sharon), Zach Dieken (Granville), Skyler Wheeler (Hull), Mark Thompson (Clarion), Thomas Gerhold (Atkins).
