As Goes Iowa, So Goes the Nation?

We can only hope the rest of the nation follows in the footsteps of my home state:

From The Des Moines Register:
April 3, 2009

"Today's ruling at a glance"
JEFF ECKHOFF

WHAT HAPPENED: Iowa Supreme Court justices ruled unanimously that Iowa Code section 595.2(1) is unconstitutional. The one-sentence law, passed in 1998, declares that “only a marriage between a male and a female is valid.”
WHAT IT DOES: The decision affirms the 2007 ruling by a Polk County judge in a lawsuit brought by six gay and lesbian couples. The couples all had been denied marriage licenses by the Polk County recorder’s office.
WHAT IT MEANS: Iowa soon will become the first Midwestern state, and the fourth nationwide, to allow same-sex marriages. The justices’ decision says their ruling “becomes effective upon issuance of procedendo,” a legal order that actual implements the decision announced Friday. Polk County officials say they expect that order to be issued in about three weeks. Marriage licenses will begin to be issued after that.
THE ARGUMENTS: In prior court proceedings, Polk County lawyers had offered five main rationales for the law banning gay marriages: to maintain traditional marriage, to promote the optimal environment for raising children, to promote procreation, to promote stability in opposite-sex relationships and to conserve state resources such as tax breaks.
Iowa justices rejected all arguments and concluded that none of the stated objectives of the law “are furthered in a substantial way by the exclusion of same-sex couples from civil marriage. Our equal protection clause requires more than has been offered to justify the continued existence of the same-sex marriage ban under the statute.”
WHAT IT MEANS FOR CHURCHES: The justices reiterate in Friday’s ruling “the freedom of a religious organization to define marriages it solemnizes as unions between a man and a woman.”
But “state government can have no religious views, either directly or indirectly through it’s legislation,” the opinion says. “As a result, civil marriage must be judged under our constitutional standards of equal protection and not under religious doctrines or the religious views of individuals.”
WHAT’S NEXT: A possible campaign to offset the ruling with an amendment to the state constitution. Such a change probably could not outlaw gay marriages, however, until 2012 at the earliest.