As Goes Iowa...

(Therese Edell, circa 1978, photo by Toni Armstrong Jr.)

As Goes Iowa...

During the late 1970s and early 1980s, a lesbian-feminist singer/songwriter named Therese Edell toured women's communities and music festivals in the U.S. to admiring crowds. Often, she would stride on stage, her guitar slung over her back, and begin her set by holding up her hands in two O's, then bring her forefingers together in a point, while singing

Do you know what's round at both ends
High in the middle?
When I was a baby child
That was my favorite riddle

We dykes would cheer for Ohio, no matter where we had grown up. We knew Therese was from the Cincinnati feminist stronghold which had given us Crazy Ladies Bookstore, Dinah (originally Dinah Soar News), and which still contains the Ohio Lesbian Archives.

The fact is, much of what was best in the national lesbian/feminist culture of that era came from the Midwest. Also nationally known but originating from Ohio was Womenews, The American Negro Woman, and Working Women Newsletter (all from Cleveland); Women's Studies Review and lesbian mothers organizing in Columbus; plus the Feminist Health Fund Newsletter and waves of Socialist women's theory emerging from Yellow Springs. Michigan gave us the largest women's music festival (outside Hesperia), the annual MichFest; the sine qua non of lesbian news forums, Lesbian Connection (still publishing) from East Lansing; the influential Aradia Collective in Grand Rapids; Moving Out and Sojourner Third World Women's Research Newsletter from Detroit; Daily Dyke, Bridges Jewish Feminist Journal, Leaping Lesbian, Purple Star (from Radicalesbians), and several of the women who later formed The Furies from Ann Arbor. Other known hot spots for lesbian-feminist culture were Madison, Wisconsin (where Amazon, Wisconsin Tribal Women's News Najinakwe, Union Maid, and two women's science fiction journals, New Moon and Aurora, were published); Milwaukee, Wisconsin (home to the Bread and Roses Women's Health Center and Women of Color News); Lincoln, Nebraska (originator of Sinister Wisdom, still publishing); Lawrence, Kansas (publishing Monthly Cycle); Bloomington, Indiana; Minneapolis, Minnesota (home to Maize Lesbian Land Journal, Sing Heavenly Muse, So's Your Old Lady, Hurricane Alice, Women's Braille Press Newsletter, and the Lesbian Insider/Insighter/Inciter); Champaign-Urbana, Illinois (home of the other national women's music festival); Chicago, Illinois (giving us the Chicago Women's Liberation Union, Women and Children First Bookstore, Mountain Moving Coffeehouse, Jane [a safe underground abortion service before Roe v. Wade], and Voices of the Women's Liberation Movement, the first national women's liberation newsletter); and Iowa City, Iowa (home to Ain't I A Woman?, the Iowa City Women's Press, Aunt Lute Books, Better Homes and Dykes, and the standout Common Lives/Lesbian Lives).

This is all prologue to me saying I'm not at all surprised that Iowa this week legalized lesbian/gay marriage in a matter-of-fact way which will likely stand without reversal until 2012. Common sense and fair play are, in fact, Midwestern values. I don't view any part of this country as expendable, hopeless, or a "fly-over" zone. Like so many other non-conforming people, I fled my home (Texas) as a young adult, moving to San Francisco to be a dyke's dyke for a dozen years, because the urban cities of this continent's margins are where we cluster. But I returned because I love my people of origin and I knew exile is often self-imposed. I've not regretted my choice.

I suspect all those women who created culture in the 1970s and who stayed rooted in the Midwest probably played a large role in making this victory possible. Community is much larger than we progressives often paint it to be. (Don't mistake that for me agreeing with the fractured view of community put forth by conservatism.) In addition, from Suze Orman to Ellen Degeneres to Rachel Maddow, it seems like suddenly lesbians are not just trendy but being viewed as beacons to be followed by the larger world. Honestly, this makes me nervous, but we'll see how it all pans out.

Vermont's passage of same-sex marriage rights seems headed for a veto by their governor, which is like trying to hold back the Mississippi each year with sandbags instead of moving cities away from the floodplain. But I want to make it clear that I don't see marriage rights as the most important issue which should be embraced by lesbians and gays in this country, and I don't view the changes occurring in this arena to be about lesbian/gay rights per se.

If lesbians and gays marry at the same rate as heterosexuals, this issue will directly affect the lives of only about 25% of us. (And let's admit here, it's much more likely to be lesbians marrying than gay men, which is why so many of those "first to get married" photos are of two women.) And of that 25% who might want to marry, there's another solid percentage who don't actually believe in the institution of marriage. I know plenty of hets my age who feel the same way. (Cue Brooklyn Bridge singing "The Worst That Could Happen"...)

Of much deeper consequence, I believe, to the lives of most lesbian and gay people is job protection, freedom from housing discrimination (including for retirees), and safeguarding our youth from violence/misinformation at school. I find it significant that polls indicate much more support for equality and basic rights in these areas, especially the first two, than for "marriage rights". I think it's been a tactical error to focus on precisely where the Right is able to do its best fund-raising, whipping up a frenzy of fear and hate about how we threaten their world.

However, despite that error, change she is a'comin. It will be portrayed, right and left, as a growing recognition that we deserve to have our love sanctified in matrimony. I'm not sure that's true. I think the definition of marriage has been under enormous pressure to change since World War II, and this is only one manifestation of a culture-wide struggle to revise an institution whose role has been crucial to maintaining control by the elite few. Divorce, birth control, refusal to marry, open marriage, reversal of anti-miscegenation laws, and a broad array of women's rights issues are other indicators of this sea change. And the Right stands in opposition to them all, which tells me (should tell you as well) how important the myth of "traditional" marriage is to the patriarchy.

I think government should remove itself from the business of marriage except as a civil contract that people can undertake to derive certain legal benefits such as choosing a coparent to your children, ensuring inheritance and medical decision-making protection, and other financial agreements. Holy matrimony should be left to religious entities and not confused with the legal contract. I think we should push for civil unions only from the state, for everybody, and if you want a church wedding on top of that, fine by me but it should carry no legal standing -- only that certificate you both swear to in front of a clerk will be binding.

I can imagine this kind of practical approach emerging from the Midwest, spreading from town to town like a fervor for the community-building opportunities of boys' bands. But then, some of my best friends are from Iowa. And Nebraska. And Ohio.

There's more...

Massachusetts Repeals 1913 Law Intended to Ban Interracial and Now Same-Sex Marriages

Leah Krieger and Orly Jacobovits join celebrations outside the Massachusetts State House in 2006 after legislators voted against a measure that would have put lesbian/gay marriage on the ballot. Photo by Jodi Hilton for The New York Times.

Massachusetts Repeals 1913 Law Intended to Ban Interracial and Now Same-Sex Marriages

Today the Massachusetts State Legislature has repealed the "1913" law which was used by the Mitt Romney administration to prevent out-of-state same-sex couples from being able to marry in Massachusetts. The "1913" law, more accurately known as Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 207, Section 11, stated "No marriage shall be contracted in this commonwealth by a party residing and intending to continue to reside in another jurisdiction if such marriage would be void if contracted in such other jurisdiction, and every marriage contracted in this commonwealth in violation hereof shall be null and void."

According to Wikipedia, "Massachusetts State Senator Harry Ney Stearns sponsored the 1913 Law on March 7, 1913. The bill was signed three weeks later by Governor Eugene N. Foss. No record of the state Senate debate has been found, and the motivation for the law is unknown. Some legal experts have argued that the original purpose of the legislation was to block interracial couples from states that banned interracial marriages from going to Massachusetts to get married. These experts note that the law was enacted at the height of a public scandal over black heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson's interracial marriages and suggest that the law was partially a reaction to the Jack Johnson affair.

"The Massachusetts law of 1913 was enacted after the proposed introduction in the United States House of Representatives in 1912 of an Anti-Miscegenation Amendment to the Constitution. This proposed nation-wide ban on interracial marriage sparked a movement among state legislatures to ban interracial marriage. By 1913, half of the 18 states that had lacked anti-miscegenation laws in 1910 introduced legislation banning interracial marriage in their state. However, Wyoming was the only state without such a ban that actually enacted an anti-miscegenation law during that time period. Massachusetts had legalized interracial marriage in 1843."

On 13 November 2003, the Goodridge vs. Dept. of Public Health judgment by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that Massachusetts could not "deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry." This was followed on 17 May 2004 by the legalization of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts, the first U.S. state to do so. Immediately after the ruling, right-wing forces funded by Governor Mitt Romney and the Republican Party sought to overturn the decision by amending the state constitution. The most recent effort in this line was defeated by the state legislature on June 14, 2007.

In the interim, Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly and other Romney-aligned state officials resurrected the "1913" law as a means of temporarily stopping same-sex marriages by arguing "enforcing the law was Massachusetts's way of respecting other states that have banned such marriages".

At that point, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) went back to court to challenge the "1913" law in the case known as Cote-Whitacre et al. v. Dept. Public Health. They won their case in 2006, as outlined in this press release from GLAD's website (which also has the final judgments and other details of the court case):

"On March 30, 2006, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court determined in the absence of a home state’s 'express prohibition' against marriage by same-sex couples – through a constitutional amendment, statute, or controlling appellate decision, Massachusetts must allow same-sex couples from that state to marry. This decision had a substantial impact on three states:

"Rhode Island
On September 29, 2006, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly ruled there is no explicit prohibition in Rhode Island law preventing same-sex couples from marrying, and, as such, Rhode Island same-sex couples could come to Massachusetts to wed. (In February, 2007, RI Attorney General Patrick Lynch issued a statement that Rhode Island will recognize the marriages of same-sex couples married in Massachusetts, and GLAD is working with partners in Rhode Island to ensure that these marriages are respected.)

"New York State
Judge Connolly also ruled that because the New Court of Appeals ruled on July 6, 2006, against marriage equality in the state’s own marriage case, couples from New York cannot marry in Massachusetts. GLAD subsequently returned to court on behalf of the New York couple in the case, Tanya Wexler and Amy Zimmerman, who married in Massachusetts in May, 2004. In a judgment on May 10, 2007, Judge Connolly ruled that Massachusetts marriages licenses issued to New York same-sex couples before July 6, 2006 are completely valid and never should have been put into question by the 1913 law.

"New Mexico
Finally, noting that New Mexico law is also silent on the question of marriage between same-sex couples, GLAD worked with the Commonwealth to correct the erroneous denial of marriage licenses to New Mexico same-sex couples. On July 18, 2007, the Massachusetts Department of Public Health and Registry of Vital Statistics issued an official corrective notice providing clerks with the authority to grant such licenses."

Today, with the repeal of the "1913" law by the legislature, this denial of marriage tactic has been definitively laid to rest.

Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) is New England’s leading legal rights organization dedicated to ending discrimination based on sexual orientation, HIV status and gender identity and expression. One of my dearest friends works for this group, and I could not be prouder of her (and them) at this moment.

There's more...