GOP likely thwarted in gay marriage battle

Following failed attempts in both the Iowa House and Senate Tuesday morning to force a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, Republican leadership has conceded that the issue won’t likely come up again before the November elections.

Creative Commons photo by jimmywayne via Flick

House Republicans attempted to invoke House Rule 60, a procedural move that allows a majority vote on the floor of the House to pull a bill out of a committee even if the committee has not approved it. The hope was that seven Democrats would join the 44 Republicans in the House and force a vote on House Joint Resolution 6, sponsored by state Reps. Dwayne Alons, R-Hull, and Delores Mertz, D-Ottosen. The bill would begin the process of amending the state’s constitution to declare marriage as only between one man and one woman.

Only Mertz joined with the GOP, causing the effort to fail. House Minority Leader Kraig Paulsen, R-Hiawatha, told reporters that the issue is likely dead this session.

“This is it,” he said. “Either there’s 51 people who want to do it or there’s not.”

Paulsen said afterward that the outcome did not come as a shock.

“I’m not surprised by the result of today’s vote,” he said. “Gov. Culver and the Democrat leaders have made it clear they do not want Iowans to have an opportunity to vote on defending traditional marriage. The likelihood of the vote count changing this session is highly unlikely,”

In the Iowa Senate, Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton, attempted to bring a similar bill, Senate Joint Resolution 2001, to the floor by getting a majority of lawmakers to sign a petition pulling it out of committee. All 18 Republicans signed on but only one of the chamber’s 32 Democrats — Tom Hancock of Epworth — joined them, causing their effort to fail as well.

McKinley said the fate of marriage will now be left to voters in the fall legislative elections.

“Iowans are tired of senators saying back home that they support allowing Iowans a vote and then not keep their word when they get to Des Moines,” McKinley said. “While our bi-partisan effort fell short of gaining the 26 votes needed to proceed, the voters this November will have an opportunity to decide if they are content with the continued Democrat obstruction and inaction”

Hancock told The Des Moines Register that he voted with Republicans because he lives “in a highly Catholic area” and his constituents want to vote on the marriage issue.

Gay-rights advocates applauded the defeat of the procedural moves, saying Republicans are out of touch with mainstream Iowans. A recent Des Moines Register Iowa Poll found that 62 percent of Iowans believe lawmakers should focus on other things besides gay marriage.

“Republicans once again pursued an agenda that is out of touch and irresponsible,” said Brad Clark, campaign director for One Iowa, the state’s largest gay-rights organization. “We applaud House Democrats who demonstrated their commitment to a responsible agenda to balance the budget and their commitment to freedom for all Iowans.”

Before the 2010 legislative session was underway, Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs, made his opinion clear on the issue.

“I will not write discrimination into the constitution of the State of Iowa,” Gronstal told The Iowa Independent. “I’m going to block that at every opportunity. There will be no vote on the constitutional amendment.”

With Gronstal’s adamant support of same-sex marriage, along with House Speaker Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, social conservative leaders conceded that the likelihood that a ban could ever be passed in 2010 was very remote. The best they could hope for was to attempt to get Democrats on the record in support of same-sex marriage and use the issue during the 2010 legislative elections.

Supporters of marriage equity are taking nothing for granted, though. During the 2009 session House Republicans also failed to force a vote on marriage using House Rule 60. But a constitutional amendment was tacked on to several other bills. State Rep. Chris Rants, R-Sioux City, first attempted to attach a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage to the state’s Health and Human Services budget, but the move was ruled out of order.

He then attempted to insert language in a Democratic tax proposal that would have defined a married couple as “a man and a woman” for the purposes of the state’s tax code. That effort also failed.

In the Senate, less effort was put into getting a ban passed, causing Christian radio host Steve Deace to criticize McKinley during his drive-time program on Iowa’s largest radio station for “feeding constituents a line of bull” about doing everything possible to stop same-sex marriage.

Anti-McKinley fliers were reportedly being distributed in Pella, paid for by a Virginia-based conservative group called Public Advocate of the United States, that called McKinley a “chicken” for not pushing harder to force a vote.

McKinley made one attempt at forcing a vote on a constitutional amendment in 2009, requesting that Gronstal join him in crafting legislation to begin the process. Gronstal refused and the matter was dead.