On March 12, at 6:00 am the Show Me Marriage Equality Bus is rolling out again. We are currently looking for same-sex couples in a loving relationship who would like to join our third bus to Iowa. If you are interested please contact me at showmenohate [at] gmail [dot] com.
On Friday, May 1st, 17 same-sex couples from Missouri boarded the first Show Me Marriage Equality Bus. They were joined by a dozen clergy members, advocates, photographers, filmmaker and several reporters. Their destination was Iowa City where they legally married in what was called, "the first Midwest victory for Marriage Equality." The day marked an historic day as Missourians and the Nation witnessed these couples getting legally married.
Iowa's first dealings with same-sex marriage came in 1998, after recent court cases starting in Hawaii found that denying the right to marry to same-sex couples was incompatible with the Equal Protection Clause of the state constitutions of most states. Iowa legislators hurried to pass a local Defense of Marriage Act to prohibit marriage between gay and lesbian couples to avoid a similar court challenge.
In 2005, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of six Polk County same-sex couples and their children who were denied marriage licenses in Iowa, arguing that this denial violated the liberty and equal protection clauses in the state constitution. In 2007, the Polk County District Court ruled in favor of the couples, prompting the county to appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court. On April 3, 2009, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously upheld the District Court's ruling holding that there was no important governmental interest in denying citizens marriage licenses based on their sexual orientation. Licenses were originally to be available 21 days after the ruling, on April 24, but the date has been pushed back to April 27.
Here is a great video of our last bus courtesy the St. Louis Post-Dispatch http://bit.ly/2QRENP
