You gotta’ love the right wing in this country. When we build strong, loving relationships, they get all fire-and-brimstone upset.
And when our relationships fall apart—they get all fire-and-brimstone upset, too.
First, they whoop and holler over actions in states like Vermont, that give us civil unions, and Massachusetts, where real marriage looks likely in the next few months.
To hear them tell it, the sky is falling! We’re undermining the roots of Western civilization. Straight people will not be safe. Life as we know it is coming to a halting crash.
Then, when we try to get out of our relationships—the sky is falling! We’re undermining the roots of Western civilization. Straight people are not safe. Everything is coming to a halting crash.
The latest legal tidbit to throw our foes into such a tizzy comes out of Iowa. There’s a real irony to me that, in this age when there is so much debate over gay and lesbian marriage, what now has the religious and political right riled is—lesbian divorce.
In November, a district judge in Sioux City, Iowa, granted the dissolution of a civil union agreement between 31-year-old Kimberly Brown and 26-year-old Jennifer Perez. The two women had been joined in a civil union in Vermont in March, 2002. They filed court papers to dissolve their union, and a judge granted it to them.
Here’s the real kicker: The judge first granted the dissolution not realizing it was for a union of two women.
When it later became public that there had essentially been a “lesbian divorce,” the judge stuck to his guns, saying he had simply helped two people divide their property. “If I’m presented with a dispute that has to be resolved in my courtroom, or is before me that affects the rights of Iowans, I feel I have an obligation to solve the problem,” the judge later said.
But the fact that a lesbian relationship went on the rocks isn’t enough for our opponents. Now, a group of conservatives, spearheaded by the Iowa Family Policy Institute in Des Moines, has asked the state’s supreme court to throw out the “divorce.”
The squawking conservatives are now accusing the judge who granted the separation of practicing “judicial activism.”
And here’s my favorite part of this whole comedic event: Chuck Hurley, president of the Iowa Family Policy Center, said that “whether intentional or not, this divorce is a back-door attempt at same-sex marriage.” An argument that sounds as funny as “jumbo shrimp” or “military intelligence.”
But there’s more.
“This appears to be part of an overall agenda,” Hurley continued. “But it could be some timid lesbian couple who couldn’t get along and just didn’t know what to do.”
No doubt that “timid lesbian couple” just couldn’t figure how to do things without a real man in their lives. No wonder they fell apart.
Personally, I would’ve thought that Mr. Hurley and his minions would be celebrating. After all, the court just dissolved a union between two people that he and his comrades believed should never have existed.
I guess some people are just never happy.
