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Details on same-sex marriage becoming legal Monday in Iowa
1:12 PM EDT, April 26, 2009
On Monday, Iowa becomes the third state offering same-sex marriage, following
Massachusetts and Connecticut. Vermont has passed a law that will take effect in
September.
Here are some details on Iowa's process:
—Marriage
requirements: Two people, over 18, not already legally married, not closely
related and legally competent to enter into a civil contract.
—License:
Applicants must show proof of identity, pay $35 fee, and have a witness sign the
application. Three-day waiting period before wedding may be performed, although
this may be waived by judge.
—Ceremony: Must be in Iowa, with both
parties, an officiate (judge or leader of a religious faith) and two witnesses
present.
—If a same-sex couple have been legally married elsewhere, their
marriage is valid in Iowa as of Monday. It is not yet clear if civil unions from
another state or registered domestic partnerships will be recognized in
Iowa.
—For a divorce, one party must have been a resident of Iowa for at
least one year.
___
Source: Lambda
Legal
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Gay couples' marriages to set Iowa apart
State residents less surprised than outsiders about legal pioneering
By Monica Davey
The New York Times
April 26, 2009
ELDON, Iowa
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As of Monday, gay couples will be allowed to marry in places like this small
town that once was the background for Grant Wood's American Gothic, the
painter's famous depiction of stern, traditional Midwesterners.
Many
people, even some who live here, cannot mesh their plain-Jane image of Iowa with
the front lines of the same-sex marriage debate.
"To be honest, I would
rather not have it in Iowa," said Shirley Cox, who has spent most of her 84
years in this old railroad town. "But the thing is," she said, "it's really none
of my business. Who am I to tell someone how to live? I live the way I want, and
they should live the way they want. I'm surely not going to stomp and raise heck
and campaign against it."
This reluctance to interlope in the lives of
neighbors might help explain how Iowa finds itself in this moment.
In
addition, Iowa has a pioneering legal past on once similarly volatile questions,
such as segregation and the role of women.
"People may think of us some
other way," said Paul Lasley, a sociologist at Iowa State University, "but in
the main, it is tolerance — not always support, but tolerance — that has really
been the weave and warp of Iowa culture. Understanding the culture of Iowa is
understanding that many of us are descendants of people who were once denied
liberties in their home countries."
This month, the Iowa Supreme Court
found a state law banning same-sex marriage to be a violation of the state
Constitution. Iowa will become one of three states, and the only one far from
the coasts, to allow same-sex marriages. Vermont will permit same-sex marriages
in September. California did, briefly, until voters rejected the practice in
November.
In Des Moines, Iowa's capital, observers of the court said the
unanimous decision surprised them.
Five of the justices were appointed
by Democratic governors; the other two, including Justice Mark S. Cady, who
wrote the opinion, were chosen by a Republican.