Gay couples vow to fight for right to marry

By Jim O’Neal

The Gazette

IOWA CITY – Robin Butler and Janelle Rettig don’t want to be rabble-rousers. They just want their state and their country to recognize their marriage.
“We’re ordinary people,” Butler said in an interview Wednesday. “We volunteer in the community. We donate money. We shovel our walks.”
Rettig, 38, and Butler, 40, have been in a committed relationship for 15 years. Last October they were married in Canada, which recognizes same-sex marriage.
At 1:30 Friday afternoon, the Iowa City couple and other same-sex couples will walk into the Johnson County Recorder’s Office to request Iowa marriage licenses. They will request that license from Johnson County Recorder Kim Painter, herself a lesbian in a committed relationship.
Painter said she will deny them that license.
The law allows her no discretion. Since 1998, Iowa law has stated that “only a marriage between a male and a female is valid.”
“My decision will be to uphold the law as written because it is the law I swore to uphold,” Painter said.
Painter won’t be carrying out her duty happily and said she looks forward to a day when Iowa law recognizes same-sex marriages.
“If that happens, it will be a sure sign that we are holding to our constitutional heritage and our heritage of having a rule of law,” she said. “If we have laws that continue to single people out for discrimination, then that will signal to me that we have allowed our laws to become totally driven by the passions of people.”
Painter said the equal protection clauses of the U.S. and state constitutions stand as bulwarks against hatred toward minority groups.
Painter, Butler and Rettig cast President Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage as a way to make political hay as the election approaches.
Painter said the U.S. Constitution should be changed “as infrequently as possible.”
“We’re always at our worst as a country when we allow ourselves to be guided by passions that divide us and separate us into classes and treat those classes differently from each other,” she said. Rettig said she and Butler hope to put a human face on a hotly debated issue.
“Our purpose is to draw attention to the fact that Iowa families are already excluded from the protections of the law,” she said.
To exclude gays and lesbians from the rights and privileges that come with marriage “is neither compassionate nor conservative,” Rettig said. “It is un-American. We’re real people with real needs, and we’re being used as a political punching bag.” Rettig and Butler noted that marriage provides many rights, from inheritance rights to health coverage, that are denied gays and lesbians.
Butler said she is puzzled by resistance to same-sex marriage. “What rights am I taking away from someone else if I get married?” she asked.
She said she is alarmed by talk of amending the Iowa Constitution to nullify any legal rights that might be applied to same-sex couples.
“It’s one thing to deny a right, but to take away rights that already exist is very scary,” she said. “It makes you wonder, ‘What country is this?’ ”

This story ran in The Gazette of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, Iowa, on Feb. 26, 2004.