Marriage Battleground

Did anyone else watch "Iowa's Marriage Battleground" on IPTV this week? It aired Tuesday night and last night. I assume it will eventually be online also, but no luck finding it yet. (IPTV says due to rights issues, the show won't be online. Sorry.)

During the show there was a "panel discussion" of sorts, laced between segments of a documentary on the marriage debate in Iowa since the 2009 Varnum ruling. On one side of the panel were Bob Vander Plaats, of big judge hunting, thrice governor running and Family Leader fame, and Tamara Scott, leader of the Concerned Woman of America and an evangelical activist who once compared gay Iowans to defective cars and salmonella-tainted peanut butter.

On the other side were state Sen. Matt McCoy, D-Des Moines, who is gay, and Connie Ryan Terrell, who leads the Iowa Interfaith Alliance and works with One Iowa, a gay rights group. Also, there was a taped interview with former state Sen. Jeff Angelo, a conservative Republican who now supports marriage equality. I was left wishing he had been on the panel.

The debate/discussion/talking points fest was about what you would expect, a couple folks who make their living by working to make their fellow Iowans into second-class citizens, vs. a couple of folks who were, for the most part, too polite and reasonable to adequately smack down the rhetorical barrage being thrown by the pros.

It was mostly same-old, same-old. Scott warned that kindergartners would soon be taught about the gay "experience." Gay marriage will lead to horrors such as polygamy, etc. But no one asked, more than two years since the Varnum ruling, where exactly are these dreaded polygamists bearing lawsuits? When will they arrive? McCoy did score a nice hit when he called these arguments "silly" and "red herrings."

Vander Plaats argued that selfish marriage equity supporters are all about I and me and mine, while he and his crusaders are thinking  only of the common good and future generations. And yet, it's such a funny coincidence how this magnanimous path to righteousness always seems to lead to more political power, influence, speaking engagements, media appearances and paychecks for the folks showing us the way. The scriptures and our founders' vision have turned out to be a real nice business model.

To quickly recap - our founders cut and pasted the Constitution out of the Bible, and cc'd Iowa in 1857. And this sacred oracle, rather than guaranteeing equal protection for all under the law - as it clearly states - is really demanding state-sanctioned discrimination by any means necessary. Oh, and "all research" and "all statistics," BVP says, prove they're right.

Much was said. But by the end of the show, one big question was left unanswered, in my humble view.

What should we worry about more, gay married couples living their lives in peace or the apparent rising influence of people like Vander Plaats and Scott, who clearly believe they are among the only true and correct interpreters of both the Holy Scriptures and the U.S./Iowa Constitution and, therefore, hold political views endorsed by not only the founders but also the Almighty?

Yeah, I'm probably going with No. 2.

On any other night, if you turned on IPTV and heard this stuff, it would likely be coming from black and white footage. And you might be thinking, "It's amazing how people could misuse the redemptive, loving teachings of Christianity to justify injustice."

But they still do, now in full color and high definition.