A county judge in Des Moines, Iowa, of all places, ruled last month that the state law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman violates the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection.
This isn’t New York or Massachusetts or California, mind you—this is our nation’s heartland.
Iowa voters, with their own defense of marriage act in place for over a decade, thought they had settled the issue of same-sex marriage. While the judge’s decision has now been stayed, this action reminds us that the institution of marriage is still under constant threat from the whims of just one obscure judge.
Anyone paying attention to the early-developing race for the White House knows that Iowa—with its first-in-the-nation presidential caucus—is crawling with aspirants for the Oval Office. Perhaps this decision by an Iowa judge will help place this issue front-and-center in the minds of voters across the nation and thus, the presidential candidates.
While some opponents of same-sex marriage argue that this is a state issue, I believe at its heart it is a national issue. In fact, I believe events in American history support this position.
I suspect that Abraham Lincoln was a staunch Federalist. While he believed most issues should be decided at the state level, there are some issues that are so compelling and basic (“first principles”) that they have to be decided at the federal level. Lincoln understood the moral dilemma that would unfold if each state was able to decide for itself whether it would be “slave” or “free.”
In a speech delivered June 17, 1858—before he became president—Lincoln said the issue of slavery was a “crisis” that the nation could not ignore.
Quoting the Bible, he said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” (Matt. 12:25).
“I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free,” Lincoln continued. “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved; I do not expect the house to fall; but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new, North as well as South.”
I have ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, as well as ancestors who fought for the Union, and I appreciate the fact that the Civil War was more complicated than just the issue of slavery. There are people who assert the war was about states’ rights and not about slavery. What do you think was the precipitating cause that made people talk about states’ rights? It was some people’s belief that it was a state’s right to allow some people to own other people. The fact is, without the issue of slavery, there never would have been a Civil War.
The slavery analogy is apt when it comes to the marriage issue. America’s families—and the culture at large—cannot survive as a union of states with half embracing same-sex marriage and half accepting only traditional marriage. The U.S. government will not disintegrate, but eventually the nation will have one definition of marriage binding us all.
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