Pro-marriage forces rally to overturn court

DES MOINES – Same-sex marriage opponents vowed Monday to “turn up the heat” on state elected officials in hopes of pressuring action to undo a controversial April 3 Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage.

More than 300 rain-soaked Iowans rallied outside the Capitol before flooding the rotunda to call out their local lawmakers and urge them to support a constitutional amendment so people can vote whether to restore marriage as only between one man and one woman in Iowa.

“I believe that we have turned the corner in this battle for marriage and that we will eventually win,” said Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center. “This is not over. We have only begun to fight.”

Organizers of the rally indicated their focus also could shift from the Statehouse to county courthouses in hopes of convincing county recorders not to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples beginning April 27 at the direction of an Iowa Supreme Court decision they believe overstepped judiciary bounds.

“Their opinion has sent Iowa into chaos,” said Kitty Rehberg, a former state senator from Rowley who now is a board member with the Everyday America group. “Iowans are awake and they stand ready to protect their Constitution.”

Bill Salier, a Nora Springs farmer who co-founded Everyday America after a GOP bid for U.S. senator in 2002, said Iowans should “vote the bums out” by putting up primary- and general-election challenges against lawmakers who block the process of allowing Iowans to vote on a constitutional amendment to protect traditional marriage.

“Those who are not walking with you are walking against you, folks,” said Salier. “They are your opponents and they are trying to destroy the very republic that our founding fathers said that they would pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to give us.”

Bob Vander Plaats, a Sioux City businessman eyeing a 2010 GOP gubernatorial bid, told the rally that, if he were elected governor and no action had been taken to stop same-sex marriages when he took office in January 2011, he would issue an executive order to stay such marriages until the people were allowed to vote on the constitutional amendment.

“As governor, I would lead,” he said.

Vander Plaats also challenged first-term Democratic Gov. Chet Culver to take similar action now, but Culver spokesman Phil Roeder said governors in Iowa don't have the ability to overturn or stay Supreme Court rulings by executive order.

“It's disappointing that some people, especially politicians who should know better, would try to mislead the public into thinking that governors do have such power,” Roeder said in a statement.

However, Vander Plaats said he believes Iowa's three branches of government are equal under the checks and balances, which would give the governor the right and responsibility to take such action.

“Let's see if he does,” Vander Plaats said. “What it would do is it would allow everyone to take a deep breath and it would force the Legislature to action.”

Leaders of One Iowa, the state's largest gay-rights advocacy group, countered the second anti-gay marriage rally at the Capitol in five days by urging the members to engage in a “virtual rally” by sending emails to legislators and Culver in support of same-sex marriage.

Justin LaVan, a Des Moines attorney active on home-schooling issues, called the Supreme Court decision a “usurpation of God's law” and a “rejection of the sovereignty of God.”

“We see that the state is instead deciding that they are the creator of the law and they're not merely the custodian of God's law,” he said. “If there's no higher law than the rule of the state, then the state becomes man's ultimate sovereign. The state is putting itself in the place of God – and that's exactly what is happening.”

Bradley Cranston, a Burlington pastor representing Iowa Baptists for Biblical Values, called the issue “critical to the existence of Christianity in the state of Iowa as we have known it for over 200 years, while Michael Walsh of the American Independent Party of Iowa likened the seven Supreme Court justices to Somalia pirates who “have taken Iowa hostage and we're not going to stand for it.”