The Washington Post has published an article that describes the politics of the courtcentric SSM campaign in Iowa.
When taking the court route, the activists identify same-sex couples to bring test cases, typically after meeting and spending time with scores of couples. They prepare the selected couples for what is likely to be intense, sometimes harsh media attention. They study the state's constitution and review past court rulings, waiting to move until they feel the political and legal climate is favorable.
The political and the legal were cojoined in a strategy that sought to impose SSM in a state that is heavily pro-marriage.
By December 2005, three years after she took on the cause, Taylor decided the foundation in Iowa was set and she filed a case for six gay couples. She selected them strategically, finding those who were representative and picking a pair from every region of the state.
The selection process cannot be emphasized enough, I think. It directly reflects the political strategy used in the courtrooms.
She also made another key strategic move -- selecting a local co-counsel, someone respected in Iowa and by the state's Supreme Court, where she knew the case would ultimately be decided.
Where high courts have decided in favor of merging SSM with marriage (under the name civil union or marriage), the defense of marriage has usually fallen to the presiding Attorney General or a Health Department or a County Office. It is rare for the lead to be provided by legal counsel supplied by a local pro-marriage organization, as in Ken Starr's oral arguments in favor of the constitutionality of Proposition 8 in California. Unlike the pro-SSM side, we generally don't get to pick our defenders.
Based on my reading of the Iowa court's pro-SSM opinion, it appears that an assertion of politics, not judicial review, decided the case. So perhaps even a stronger legal defense would not have overcome that political bias.
"There wasn't a strong local group that would be the go-to group for organizing a campaign for marriage equality," said Sharon Malheiro, who founded the group One Iowa shortly after Taylor filed suit on behalf of the six couples.
"If we were going to do this in Iowa, it had to be Iowans talking to Iowans," Malheiro said. One Iowa began coordinating with Taylor and Lambda Legal, with the local group taking over much of the public education effort.
It is not clear how a courtcentric campaign amounts to Iowans talking to Iowans. The pro-SSM attempt to re-educate the public has failed since the majority continued to oppose to the SSM-merger.
Taylor made one other major tactical move in the fall of 2006, when she added the couples' children as plaintiffs. Some people in the gay advocacy movement objected, she said, saying that children should not be inserted into the marriage debate. But Taylor wanted to raise the issue of the rights of children of gay couples to deflate the opposition argument that marriage was solely about procreation.
The presence of children in same-sex households does not "deflate" the strong argument in favor of the contingency for responsible procreation.
Indeed, there is no pro-marriage argument from any major pro-marriage organization -- in court or outside -- that claims that procreation is the sole purpose of marriage. The tactical move was a political move, not a legal move, and as such it was to showcase a strawman argument for the pro-SSM side to attack.
This frank glimpse into the local courtcentric campaign in Iowa and into the thinking of its leading lights ought to reinforce our resolve against SSM argumentation and SSM politics. We face identity groups whose goal is to subvert the Law and to make gay identity politics a trump card against all opposition and dissent. Like the ascendancy of identity politics of all kinds, the use of strawmen arguments and the misrepresentation of those who disagree is endemic to the SSM campaign -- both inside and outside of the courtrooms.
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Compare and contrast with the ground politics of the pro-SSM legislative campaign in Vermont: Wrenched Connections.
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