State legislative leaders vow no action on gay marriage

Same-sex marriage will not be an issue in next year’s legislative session, said the highest-ranking Democrats from both chambers of the Iowa legislature.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal speaks as House Speaker Pat Murphy and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean look on.

“Our goal is, hopefully for a long time, to do nothing on this issue,” Iowa House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, said. “To let people know that on April 3 there was a ruling, and on April 27 there were a lot of people who said the end of the world was coming. Well, it’s a month later, and the sun is still shining, the grass is still green and people are enjoying their lives and living in more dignity because of what’s happened.”

Murphy and Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, spoke Thursday night at a reception in their honor hosted by One Iowa, the state’s largest gay rights organization. The day the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Gronstal and Murphy issued a joint statement praising the decision and closed the door on legislative action to overturn it. Over the course of the session’s final weeks, both men repeatedly beat back attempts to push through a constitutional amendment overturning the court’s decision.

Also speaking at the event was former Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean, who, as governor of Vermont, signed the country’s first civil unions bill into law nearly ten years ago. Dean applauded Gronstal and Murphy for their efforts.

“The reason I am proud of them is that they have done something that is not easy to do,” Dean said. “This is an incredibly emotional issue; I don’t have to tell you what the backlash is. But people in politics who have to face voters, this is the tough thing to stand up for. When people take risks like this on your behalf, you have got to support them.”

Dr. Howard Dean mingles with the crowd at Thursday night's One Iowa event. Also in attendance were U.S. Rep. Leonard Boswell, former Lt. Gov. Sally Pederson, Gov. Chet Culver Press Secretary Troy Price and numerous state legislators.

The summer after the Vermont civil unions bill was signed, Dean said the rhetoric became so heated he wore a bulletproof vest most of the time. Flash forward to last month and Vermont’s legislature was able to overwhelmingly pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage. That shows how much opinion can change over time.

“Once somebody stands up and says who they are, it’s impossible to discriminate against them,” he said. “Most decent human beings can say terrible things about somebody they don’t know anything about. They can’t say those things about friends and neighbors.”

Despite the praise, Gronstal said he didn’t stand up for same-sex marriage in order to win support.

“We do have to face the voters, but we also have to face ourselves every morning,” he said. “We have to be able to look ourselves in the mirror every day. And by the way, we didn’t do this for the GLBT community. We did this for everybody.”

The goal now, Murphy said, is to make sure the work doesn’t stop and groups like One Iowa continue to fight to elect “open-minded people who are willing to protect the rights of the people of this state.”

Dean agreed, saying if Iowa fails, the entire gay rights movement could fail.

“We have to make sure they get re-elected,” he said. “If they lose, this sets back the movement. People around the country will say: ‘Look what they did in Iowa, and look at the price Democrats had to pay.’ So it makes a big difference.”