Tuesday, April 21, 2009

IOWA GAY MARRIAGE COMES TO ILLINOIS

IOWA GAY MARRIAGE COMES TO ILLINOIS
by Jonathan Lewis
Copyright by Gay Chicago Magazine
April 23-29, 2009
http://www.gaychicagomagazine.com/coverstory/coverstory.shtml

On Friday, April 24, Gay Chicago Magazine will offer early registration for gay marriage in Iowa from noon to 5p.m. Applications will be available starting on April 23, but Iowa requires a three-day waiting period before a marriage can be performed. So it will not be possible to drive over the border, go the county courthouse, get a license and tie the knot. Early registration is a must for out-of-state applicants.

A desk will be set up just inside the magazine’s front door. You will fill out the application and need to pay a $50 fee. (The license is $35 in Dubuque, the closest point-of-entry into Iowa from Chicago, but with filing and mailing the licenses back to Illinois recipients the fee increases to $50.) A notary public will be here to stamp the applications and personally drop them off at the Dubuque courthouse for filing. The licenses should be mailed back within one week or five to seven business days.

The first day that Iowa will allow gay marriage is on April 30. The courthouse office only remains open until 2:30 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Courthouse hours are 9 a.m to 5 p.m. on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The Courthouse is closed on weekends, so people wishing to marry will have to do it during the week. Once you have filled out the application and gotten your license, try to arrive early as the initial rush to get married may cause long lines.

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. They argued 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.

Iowa is gearing up for a big rush on gay weddings. The capital of Des Moines is in the middle of the state, so it is expected that Chicagoans or Illinois residents will most likely travel to Dubuque to get married. The trains no longer run to Dubuque, so if you are without a car, you will have to rely on the Amtrak to take you to Galesburg, IL and then across the border to Burlington, IA. Sadly, Burlington does not offer scenic attractions and has not much to recommend it except for a state prison. Besides, it is in a very conservative county, so it is entirely possible that gays or lesbians seeking to get married may face resistance, if not outright opposition.

So for Chicagoans, Dubuque may become the logical, obvious and most desirable of wedding destinations. But is it really what you want to remember as the place where you got married? Fear not, Dubuque has its bucolic charms as a vibrant river city since the early 1800s. Situated along the Mississippi River, the location is distinctive because of its steep hills and river bluffs – geographic features that many people don’t expect to find in Iowa.

Dubuque is Iowa’s oldest city and is among the oldest settlements west of the Mississippi River. The first permanent settler to the area was French-Canadian fur trader Julien Dubuque. From his arrival in 1785, he started developing close relationships with the Mesquakie (Fox) Indians while trading fur, and the Mesquakie informed him of the region’s wealth of lead deposits.

Working together to mine the lead with the Mesquakie, Julien Dubuque was eventually given control of the mines, which he named the Mines of Spain ,and successfully operated until his death in 1810. On June 1, 1833, the land Julien Dubuque had worked so hard to develop was opened up for settlement by the United States Government under the Black Hawk Purchase Treaty and came to be known as the city of Dubuque when it was chartered in 1837.

Dubuque’s location on the Mississippi and its abundant land and resources attracted large numbers of immigrants, particularly Irish and Germans, from overcrowded cities on the east coast. The Black Hawk Purchase Treaty allowed miners the first opportunity to settle along the banks west of the Mississippi and those that moved westward referred to Dubuque as the “Key City” – the place in which the door to their dreams of a better life was opened.

Dubuque takes great pride in the slogan, “Masterpiece on the Mississippi,” but such was not always the case. In the 1980s, the city faced urban blight common to many large population centers. In the late 1990s, the Dubuque County Historical Society created the America’s River project that transformed 90 acres of underutilized, industrial, brown field property north of the historic Ice Harbor into a campus capturing the historical, environmental, educational and recreational majesty of the Mississippi River.

The area now known as the Port of Dubuque has become a stunning gateway for the city and to the state of Iowa. And it now serves symbolically as a gateway – a “Key City” you might say – for gay and lesbian couples to finally realize their dream of getting married, even if it is a right still not granted in our own home state.

With its numerous historic districts, well-preserved buildings and homes, charming Main Street, museums, theatres, arts troupes, colleges, parks and the majestic river, Dubuque might even make a picturesque spot for a honeymoon weekend

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