Both issues are big topics in the Hawkeye State. The Iowa Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in April, and since that time Iowa Republicans have repeatedly demanded the legislature pass a constitutional amendment overturning the decision. That amendment would eventually go to the voters to decide.

Marriage equality advocates in Iowa kept a watchful eye on Maine for months, knowing one day they could have to fight that battle themselves. The organization leading the fight against same-sex marriage in Main and across the country, the National Organization for Marriage, has already vowed to dedicate time and resources in Iowa.

“We were watching this election closely in Iowa as it is a precursor to we will be up against,” said Carolyn Jenison, executive director of the state’s largest LGBT advocacy group One Iowa. “Our hearts go out to the couples in Maine who have lost something so dear and central to being an America family.”

Maine is the 31st state to reject same-sex marriage at the ballot box. Iowa and four other states — Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont — allow same-sex marriage.

Iowa conservatives are pointing to the Maine decision as proof that the issue could be a big advantage to Republicans in 2010.

“There is no doubt that a marriage amendment would find overwhelming support here in Iowa, yet Gov. [Chet] Culver, Speaker Pat Murphy and [Senate] Majority Leader Mike Gronstal are preventing the vote from taking place,” conservative blogger and former Republican Party of Iowa Political Director Craig Robinson wrote Wednesday. “While that strategy might help propel their liberal philosophy, it could hurt them at the ballot box next November.”

Gronstal and Murphy have repeatedly said the same-sex marriage issue will never be debated as long as they lead their respective legislative chambers.

Maine voters approved an expansion of the conditions that would qualify for medical marijuana and allows for a statewide system of storefront distribution centers. The Iowa Pharmacy Board has held a series of hearings around the state on the topic of medical marijuana, and state Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, introduced a bill during the 2009 legislative session to allow the possession and use of marijuana for therapeutic purposes.

Rod Roberts

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Rod Roberts of Carroll supports the ouster of three Iowa Supreme Court justices that are up for retention votes in 2010 due to their verdict legalizing same-sex marriage earlier this year.

Roberts said he will personally vote “no” on all three who will appear on the ballot — Chief Justice Marsha Ternus and Justices Michael Streit and David Baker — and will use his campaign to encourage Iowans to do the same.

“We need to send a message to the Iowa Supreme Court that they are accountable to the people of Iowa,” Roberts said. “The problem with judicial activism is that it thwarts the will of the legislature and of the people of Iowa. Next November, it is our duty as voters to let these justices know what we think of their judicial activism.”

Roberts has long been critical of the court’s April decision in Varnum v. Brien, in which six same-sex couples sued Polk County Recorder Timothy Brien for not issuing them marriage licenses. The court unanimously ruled that Iowa’s law denying same-sex couples the right to marry violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.

In Iowa, Supreme Court judges are up for retention every eight years.

Fred Phelps and members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a fundamentalist splinter group from Kansas that travels around the country staging hate-filled protests, will be in Waukee, Ames and Marshalltown on July 24.

In Waukee, the group will rally against the Iowa Jewish Historical Society, because, according to the group’s Web site, “history says Jews killed Jesus,” and “while we’re passing through, we thought we would help Iowa with a little history lesson.”

The Ames protest will take place near the campus of Iowa State University in order to tell students “God hates you.” It will focus on April’s Iowa Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage.

The group’s main protest will be outside the Marshalltown Community Theater, which is staging a production of “The Laramie Project,” a play that depicts the events of the death of Matthew Shepard, a gay student at the University of Wyoming who was murdered in an apparent hate crime.

Phelps and his church are monitored as a hate group by the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center. The organization has 71 confirmed members, 60 of whom are related to Phelps. A representative of the group told the Marshalltown Times-Republican that 18 church members had signed up for the trip, however City Clerk Sheri Coughnhour told the paper the group had not yet filed for a permit to protest.

(The group’s schedule can be found on its Web site, which readers might find offensive or inappropriate.)

Fong told Cedar Rapids ABC affiliate KCRG that while Iowans deserve the right to vote on a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as one man and one woman, he does not condemn those who disagree with him.

“I’m not embarrassed about where I stand on that issue,” Fong said. “But at the same time I don’t look across at anybody that has a different view. I don’t condemn them for what they hold so deeply.  And I invite everyone to the table.”

Brian Dumas, a political consultant with the firm Victory Enterprises and an adviser to Fong’s campaign, anticipated the answer would upset Deace and e-mailed him a transcript of the interview with the hopes of heading off any angry reaction.

Deace was not impressed, and responded quickly on his blog.

First of all, the idea “that I don’t condemn people that have a different view” is a ridiculous statement for a person that serves as essentially an elder at a Christian church to make.  The Bible constantly condemns people who advance evil, and isn’t shy about doing it.  It also condemns those who claim they know right from wrong but won’t take a stand, you know, kind of like Fong does in the [KCRG] transcript.

God says homosexuality is evil, Deace wrote, so Fong should have no problem condemning evil.

Why would Christians respect the views of those who want to advance evil?  Would Fong say the same thing about Islamic radicalism?  He’d have to, unless he doesn’t really believe homosexuality is evil and that’s why he’s saying such soft-headed psychobabble — trying to pull the wool over your eyes.

Deace then attacks Fong for not agreeing with another GOP gubernatorial hopeful, Bob Vander Plaats, that the governor can issue an executive order stopping same-sex marriage. Fong told KCRG that he “wouldn’t waste time signing an order that my legal staff said was unenforceable anyway.”

Constitutional scholars, as well as Vander Plaats’ other rivals for the Republican nomination in 2010, agree with Fong that the governor does not have the authority under Iowa’s Constitution to issue such an order.

King was the lone dissenting vote Tuesday when the U.S. House passed the measure, which also calls for the placement of a marker paying tribute slaves. The Kiron Republican said his decision was based on the bill being used as a bargaining chip to allow the depiction of “In God We Trust” in the Capitol Visitor’s Center. Kiernan said it was actually an example of King being out of touch with Iowa values.

Here is the statement Kiernan released Thursday morning:

“Iowans have a rich history of embracing diversity and of leading the nation in support of civil rights for African Americans. Years before the Civil War, Iowa Courts determined there would be no place for slavery in our state. Nearly a century before ‘Separate But Equal’ was deemed unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court, we in Iowa desegregated our schools, opening opportunities for children and families without regard to race. And in the years since, our elected officials and courts have protected these rights, which we hold so dear. This is a tradition we can be proud of.

But Congressman Steve King has flown in the face of our history of inclusion, and of progress. This vote is an embarrassment to his constituents, and to Iowa. Congressman King has once again showed that he is out of touch with Iowa values, and he must be held accountable for this vote. Iowans deserve better.”

With no formal political experience, Fong’s positions on the issues are still a mystery to most voters. Unlike his GOP competition, who have endured numerous campaigns and been thoroughly vetted, Fong is a virtual unknown to those living outside his hometown of Cedar Rapids.

But over a series of months, Fong has repeatedly posted on Hawkeye Review, a blog run by Linn County GOP chair Tim Palmer. His posts there may represent the only window currently available into Fong’s political thinking, and some of his thoughts may be controversial to Iowa’s conservative Republican base.

Fong first came to the attention of GOP activists when he spoke out publicly against a Democratic tax proposal that included ending federal deductibility. Addressing a legislative committee, Fong said this “tax-on-a-tax plan will cost us jobs. Not just a handful of jobs, but hundreds of jobs, and not just in Linn County, but also across the state. A recession is the worst time imaginable to raise taxes.”

However, his position on the issue is not as cut and dried as it may appear. In a post a few days earlier, Fong said he agreed with the idea of ending federal deductibility, he simply disagreed with how Democrats would handle the influx of money that would result.

Instead, this is my income tax proposal:

Eliminate deductibility of federal taxes, and lower all marginal state income tax rates to the point that no working Iowan of any income level will see their taxes rise.

Another issue sure to be a factor in the GOP primary is the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage. How to overturn that decision has already caused friction between two Republican candidates, Bob Vander Plaats and Christopher Rants.

In discussing the ruling, Fong wrote it would be “rightly be characterized as an attack on marriage, and also on Iowa’s families and Iowa’s communities.” But he warned against conservatives being “baited into a negative-toned or knee-jerk reaction by those that make their living off of single-issue politics or special-interest fundraising.” While he supports overturning the decision, he said the “frantic calls for a marriage amendment… are counter factual to the realities of how the constitutional process works.”

And, since I’m not making any friends with this paragraph, let me suggest that turning a moral issue into a political chip is both disrespectful to the people involved and trivializes an important debate. We all have deep feelings on this, which is why it is too important to be jammed through in a state of panic.

Instead of “raging against the decision,” Fong would rather see his party “advance a positive, optimistic plan that is not just pro-marriage, but pro-family,” including making family counseling tax deductible, giving community-college based job training for the unemployed and government funded catastrophic family health care coverage for those who are out of work.

After all, medical emergencies are the number one reason families face personal bankruptcy, and financial stress is one of the top causes of divorce.

Fong calls for the state to revamp the tax code to “eliminate the loopholes and special interest credits that enable some to pay none, and mind-boggling complexity that turn honest folks into tax criminals.” He said Culver’s I-JOBS program, which borrows more than $800 million to pay for infrastructure repair and flood recovery, will simply extend budgetary pain and “delay the inevitable.”

The State of Iowa must either grow by raising taxes and fees, or shrink by cutting spending.

During debate of the bonding proposal, Fong said the legislature should borrow to pay for the “fantastic, new Iowa Economy projects that are going to pay off in big ways” that are included in the I-JOBS program, as long as they are “not stapled to pork.”

Fong has blogged repeatedly about his party’s need to over come the “I’m right, you’re wrong, so there!” style of politics.

Most of us know someone who suffers from this same condition. What are the symptoms? You’ll know it by a retreat into non-sensical, single-issue ideology: Jobs lost? “Must be high taxes.” School enrollment down? “High taxes.” Uncle Ned’s business failed? “High taxes!!” Wide ties back in fashion? Softball league dropped their playoff? Fender bender on Highway 30? “A thousand times, high taxes! High taxes!!”

Come on! Life is complex. A paradigm built on issue-based politics, or sound-bite style logic, is inadequate to win in the marketplace of ideas, and a lousy way to try to win an election. If you hear a journalist, a politician, or your next door neighbor constantly harping on something as the root of all evil, you have found philosophical paralysis. It’s time to move on.

Fong’s blog posts at the Hawkeye Review have been compiled for easy access here. He also spoke Wednesday with O.Kay Henderson at Radio Iowa and answered questions about his entrance into the race, including the fact that he donated money to several Democratic legislative candidates.

Politifact, a Pulitzer-prize winning project by the staff of the St. Petersburg Times, has investigated King’s claim and discovered it’s not only a lie, but what they clasify as a “pants on fire” lie.

So we’ve found nothing to support the opponents’ claims that pedophiles would be protected by the hate crimes bill. The experience of 31 states that have similar laws, the FBI’s definition of sexual orientation and the opinions of legal experts have persuaded us not only that the opponents are wrong, but that their arguments are preposterous.

The Hate Crimes Prevention Act has drawn fire from some conservatives due to one section of the bill that would add “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the list of hate crime categories.

King told Fox News on May 6 that adding sexual orientation to the bill would provide “special protection to pedophiles.”

Well, so within that definition, though, of sexual orientation by the American Psychological Association you’ve got a whole list of proclivities — they call them paraphilias — and in that list, among them are pedophiles.

However the FBI’s Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines, prepared in response to the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act, defines “sexual orientation bias” as “a preformed negative opinion or attitude toward a group of persons based on their sexual attraction toward, and responsiveness to, members of their own sex or members of the opposite sex, e.g., gays, lesbians, heterosexuals.”

Politifact also found that there are currently 31 states with hate crime laws that include sexual orientation, and there are no cases at either the federal, state or local level that even come close to what King describes.

(h/t to the Sioux City Journal’s Bret Hayworth)

The Pine Tree State joins Iowa, Vermont, Connecticut and Massachusetts in defining marriage as the legal union of two people rather than between a man and a women.

“In the past, I opposed gay marriage while supporting the idea of civil unions,” Baldacci said in a statement. “I have come to believe that this is a question of fairness and of equal protection under the law, and that a civil union is not equal to civil marriage.”

The District of Columbia could join this group shortly, as its city council passed a resolution recognizing same-sex marriage that Mayor Adrian Fenty has said he will sign.

The Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage goes into effect today, and couples have lined up at courthouses around the state to finally have their relationships legally recognized.

Sen. Merlin Bartz, a Republican from Grafton, has spent the last few weeks urging county recorders to disobey the law, despite warnings from Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller that doing so could result in being removed from office. Then the Alliance Defense Fund, an Arizona-based legal advocacy group founded in 1994 by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, and the Iowa Family Policy Center sent an e-mail to Iowa’s 99 county recorders informing them that they would receive free legal defense if they defied the law.

The efforts appear to have been unsuccessful, as county recorders have decided to follow the court’s ruling and issue licenses.

“My personal belief is that a marriage should be between a man and a woman, but I did take an oath of office as county recorder, which states that I support the Constitution of the state of Iowa, so I will be treating all applications for marriage licenses the same — it’s simple as that,” Sioux County Recorder Anita Van Bruggen told the Quad City Times.

Sioux County is not only the most conservative part of Iowa, referred to by many as Iowa’s Bible Belt, but it is more conservative than any other county in the country, according to the Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voting Index.

Several county recorders issued similar statements to the Iowa Independent over the weekend. Republican Craig Franken, who serves as county recorder for Butler County in northern Iowa, said his office will make no distinction between same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples when it comes to marriage licenses, per the Supreme Court’s ruling.

According to several media reports, marriage applications have been received in Bremer, Butler, Cerro Gordo, Chickasaw, Dallas, Dubuque, Fayette, Floyd, Fremont, Grundy, Guthrie, Howard, Linn, Mitchell, Pottawattamie, Polk, Harrison, Johnson, Mills, Winneshiek, Woodbury and Worth counties.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal, D-Council Bluffs

Gronstal, who lauded the Supreme Court decision handed down Friday overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, was asked by Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley, R-Chariton, if he would join with Republicans in crafting a bill to move an amendment forward.

“Eleven years ago, you voted in favor of protecting marriage as between one man and one woman,” McKinley said. “Will  you pledge to work with me and craft a leadership bill on this important issue and bring it to the floor a vote by this body?”

In response, Gronstal shared a story about his daughter, Kate, telling a group of conservative men that opponents of same-sex marriage “have already lost” and that the younger generation doesn’t care.

“I learned something from my daughter that day. That’s what I see, Sen. McKinley,” Gronstal said. “I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other and want state law to recognize that.  Is that so wrong?  I don’t think that’s so wrong.”

He has learned a lot since he voted in favor of Iowa’s Defense of Marriage Act in 1998, Gronstal said, and he will not join in the crafting of a marriage amendment.

“Friday I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night, because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other,” he said.

McKinley thanked Gronstal for his honestly, but said Iowans should have the right to vote on the issue and elected officials shouldn’t stand in the way, later saying the Senate leader was engaging in “pure obstruction.”

“Iowa is a sovereign state and I will accept the will of the people but we will not know the will of the people until a vote of the people is taken and it is wrong for Sen. Gronstal to obstruct that vote,” he said.

Below is McKinley’s statement and request for Gronstal to help craft a marriage amendment:

Below is Gronstal’s response: