WE Blog

A unanimous decision by the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court approved marriage for couples of the same sex and brought the nation a step closer toward realizing its promise of equality and justice. The new decision says marriage is a civil contract and should not be defined by religious doctrine or views. The immediate impact of Iowa’s ruling was to make the failure to respect gay people’s freedom to marry, by courts and legislatures in states like New York, seem all the more shameful. — New York Times editorial

You really can’t have “gay marriage,” you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say. The human race understands marriage as a compact reinforcing social survival and projection. It has always been so. It will always be so, even if every state Supreme Court pretended to declare that what isn’t suddenly is. The Iowa court’s decision in the gay marriage case is pure nonsense. We’re reminded again — as with Roe v. Wade, the worst decision in the history of human jurisprudence — of the reasons judges should generally step back from making social policy. — William Murchison, Dallas Morning News