Iowa's Family Values

[Defekted]

Couple good op-eds today in the times......

April 9, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Iowa’s Family Values
By STEVEN W. THRASHER
IF it weren’t for Iowa, my family may never have existed, and this gay, biracial New Yorker might never have been born.

In 1958, when my mother, who was white, and father, who was black, wanted to get married in Nebraska, it was illegal for them to wed. So they decided to go next door to Iowa, a state that was progressive enough to allow interracial marriage. My mom’s brother tried to have the Nebraska state police bar her from leaving the state so she couldn’t marry my dad, which was only the latest legal indignity she had endured. She had been arrested on my parents’ first date, accused of prostitution. (The conventional thought of the time being: Why else would a white woman be seen with a black man?)

On their wedding day, somehow, my parents made it out of Nebraska without getting arrested again, and were wed in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on March 1, 1958. This was five years before Nebraska would strike down its laws against interracial marriage, and almost a decade before the Supreme Court would outlaw miscegenation laws throughout the country in Loving v. Virginia.

When the good state of Iowa conferred the dignity of civic recognition on my parents’ relationship — a relationship some members of their own families thought was deviant and immoral, that the civil authorities of Nebraska had tried to destroy, and that even some of my mom’s college-educated friends believed would produce children striped like zebras — our family began. And by the time my father died, their interracial marriage was seen just as a marriage, and an admirable 45-year one at that.

That I almost cried last week upon reading that the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the state law banning same-sex marriage will therefore come as no surprise. I’m still struck by one thought: over the years, I’ve met so many gay émigrés who felt it was unsafe to be gay in so-called flyover country and fled for the East and West coasts. But as a gay man, I can’t marry in “liberal” New York, where I’m a resident, or in “liberal” California, where I was born, and very soon I will have that right in “conservative” Iowa.

Of course, the desire to define relational rights and responsibilities with a partner, to have access to the protection that this kind of commitment affords, is rather conservative. But it’s a conservative dream that should be offered to all Americans. Though it takes great courage for gays to marry in a handful of states now, one hopes that someday, throughout the nation, gay marriages, like my parents’ union, will just be seen as marriages.

It’s safe to say that neither the dramas of our family, nor its triumphs, could have been possible without the simultaneously radical and conservative occasion of my parents’ civil marriage in Iowa. And so when the time comes, I hope to be married at the City Hall in Council Bluffs, in the state that not only supports my civil rights now, but which supported my parents’ so many years ago.

Steven W. Thrasher is a writer and media producer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/op...gewanted=print

[ShaE]

amazing, idiots screaming about "redefining marriage" as if the institution itself is threatened.

let two people that love each other marry, period.

[ShaE]

interracial kids turning out like zebras? sometimes they're the most gorgeous, halle berry anyone? lol

[jameznyhc]

amazing, idiots screaming about "redefining marriage" as if the institution itself is threatened.

let two people that love each other marry, period.

yeah because if they let women and men marry within the same sex it would not be REDEFINED? .. thats exactly what the debate is about lol

[ShaE]

yeah because if they let women and men marry within the same sex it would not be REDEFINED? .. thats exactly what the debate is about lol

my point was people are whining and freaking out like it's the end of the world.

same as it seems they did when interracial marriage was illegal.

it's not, get a fkin grip.

[ShaE]

like somehow allowing two men or two women to marry is going to threaten your ability to marry heterosexually lol

paranoia and intolerance at its worst.

[jameznyhc]

my point was people are whining and freaking out like it's the end of the world.

same as it seems they did when interracial marriage was illegal.

it's not, get a fkin grip.

no people who oppose correctly point out a rel;ationship between a man and woman is not the same as a same sex relationship .. especially when it comes to starting a family .. one couple can ..the other can not .. whether the straight couple choose to start a family or not they do have the ability too .. therefor the relationship is not comparable .. an interacial couple can conceive as a same race couple..homosexuals can not

[jameznyhc]

like somehow allowing two men or two women to marry is going to threaten your ability to marry heterosexually lol

paranoia and intolerance at its worst.

nobody ever said that lol..whats intolerant of civil union ..they should get every right and benefit of hetero couples theres nothing intolerable about that .. the intolerance comes from people who want to change the definition of marriage IMO

[ShaE]

intolerance because they want it to be called marriage for them as well? how the hell you gonna spin that one?

reproduction has nothing to do w/ it, plenty of people get married and do not have kids. the relevance of family is no longer primary to the definition of marriage.

it's two people committed as partners for life, in a legally identified union.

no reason why two gay people cannot do that.

[jameznyhc]

[QUOTE=ShaE;2902689]

intolerance because they want it to be called marriage for them as well? how the hell you gonna spin that one?

because clearly the majority of americans even in the most liberal states oppose it ..not many people oppose civil unions..its intolerant to change to institution

reproduction has nothing to do w/ it, plenty of people get married and do not have kids. the relevance of family is no longer primary to the definition of marriage

.

i know i pointed it out whether a herero couple decides to start a family is not the point .. but the ability to reproduce is what makes hetero and homosexual relationships incomparable

it's two people committed as partners for life, in a legally identified union.

i agree same sex couple should have that right .. but not to change the instituion of marriage