An Iowa same-sex marriage milestone

For those who mark anniversaries, today is the 10th for Sean Fritz and Timothy McQuillan (above), married on this date, Aug. 31, during 2007 on the front lawn of the Rev. Mark Stringer (left), veteran minister of Des Moines' First Unitarian Church. Theirs was the first same-sex marriage to be recognized legally in Iowa.

The Rev. Mr. Stringer retired as minister earlier this year and, as of May 1, serves as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa. His "Iowa View" piece commemorating that marriage was published Tuesday in The Register. You'll find it here.

The marriage was possible because, on Aug. 30, 2007, Polk County District Court Judge Robert Hanson had ruled in Varnum v. Brien that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated the liberty and equal protection clauses of Iowa's constitution. 

Iowa law requires a three-day waiting period between issue of license and marriage, but Fritz and McQuillan were granted a judicial waiver shortly after obtaining their license from the Polk County recorder, were married on the Stringer lawn, then rushed back to the recorder's office to record the marriage ahead of the anticipated stay on his ruling that Hanson issued later that morning.

Another Iowa couple, Terry Lowman and Mark Kassis, also obtained a license to marry and the ceremony was performed on Sept. 2 at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Ames. They were not able to record the marriage, however, as a result of Judge Hanson's stay --- so for two years Fritz and McQuillan were the only same-sex couple to have been married legally in the state.

On April 3, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously affirmed Hanson's 2007 district court ruling and marriage has been available to same-sex couples here since April 27 of that year.

So far as I know, our late and still lamented vicar at St. Andrew's, the Rev. Sue Palmer, was the first among Chariton clergy to perform a same-sex marriage.

There have been minor bumps along the road, of course. The Iowa Department of Public Health refused initially to list both same-sex parents on the birth and death records of their children. Courts put an end to that intransigence with rulings during 2012 and 2013.

And during November of 2012, three of the Iowa Supreme Court justices who had been party to the 2009 ruling in Varnum v. Brien were removed from office during that year's regular judicial retention vote as the result of a successful campaign against them by Christianist extremists.

 But public opinion has shifted as the years have passed. Data from 2014 suggested that at that time 53 percent of Iowans supported same-sex marriage, 14 percent were indifferent to the issue and only 33 percent were opposed.

I've known, or known of, quite a few gay and lesbian couples married during and after 2009, And since today is in a sense their anniversary, too, congratulations!