There's nothing opponents of marriage equality can do to stop gay and lesbian couples from getting married in Iowa starting on April 24, but the political battle over marriage equality will go on for a long time after wedding bells start ringing.
After the jump I will bring you up to date on the political reaction to last Friday's Iowa Supreme Court ruling, prospects for amending Iowa's constitution and the latest statewide opinion poll on same-sex marriage.
I do most of my writing at the Iowa progressive community blog Bleeding Heartland.
Last year at this time I was scrambling to make as many phone calls and knock on as many doors as I could before the Iowa caucuses on January 3.
This week I had a little more time to reflect on the year that just ended.
After the jump I've linked to Bleeding Heartland highlights in 2008. Most of the links relate to Iowa politics, but some also covered issues or strategy of national importance.
I only linked to a few posts about the presidential race. I'll do a review of Bleeding Heartland's 2008 presidential election coverage later this month.
This morning the Iowa Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Varnum v Brien, a case in which six couples are challenging Iowa's law declaring that "Only a marriage between a male and female is valid." Polk County has appealed a district judge's ruling last year that the statute is unconstitutional. Last night jpmassar published a good overview of the legal issues underlying Judge Robert Hanson's ruling as well as the county's defense of the statute. (See also Osorio's legal primer on the case.)
Links to video of the oral arguments can be found the Iowa Supreme Court's website. The Des Moines Register's article summarizing the arguments (with embedded video) is here. You can download pdf files of the district court ruling and the briefs submitted to the Iowa Supreme Court on appeal here.
My focus in this diary is not the legal arguments, but the political case that will need to be made for marriage equality once the Supreme Court has ruled on Varnum v Brien several months from now.
