Iowa county flirts with gay marriage
One couple got legally hitched there before a judge issued a stay.
DES MOINES, Iowa - Same-sex marriage was legal here for less than 24 hours before the county won a stay of a judge's order yesterday.
That left a tiny window of opportunity that allowed two men to make history but dozens of other couples disappointed after a frantic rush to the altar.
At 2 p.m. Thursday, Judge Robert Hanson ordered Polk County officials to accept marriage-license requests from same-sex couples, but he granted the stay to make way for an appeal at 12:30 p.m. yesterday. By then, 27 same-sex couples had filed requests, but only Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan of Ames had actually gotten their license.
In the front yard of the Rev. Mark Stringer, pastor of the First Unitarian Church of Des Moines, they become the only same-sex couple wed in the nation outside Massachusetts, where 8,000 such couples have tied the knot.
Stringer concluded the ceremony by saying, "This is a legal document and you are married."
The men kissed and hugged. "This is it. We're married. I love you," Fritz told McQuillan.
No more same-sex marriage licenses will be issued, and no more applications accepted, pending Polk County's appeal of Hanson's ruling to the Iowa Supreme Court, County Attorney John Sarcone said.
Lytishya Borglum and partner Danielle Borglum drove 21/2 hours from Cedar Falls, along with their 13-month-old daughter. They planned to apply in Polk County and told their pastor in Cedar Falls to be ready to marry them when they returned.
"[We] plan to take the application home and pray that things change," Lytishya Borglum said. "Even though it is a setback, it is a step in the right direction."
Accepting marriage licenses from same-sex couples has been illegal under a 1998 state law that permitted only a man and a woman to marry.
Hanson, ruling in a case filed by six same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses in 2005, declared the law unconstitutional Thursday. He ruled that the marriage laws "must be read and applied in a gender neutral manner so as to permit same-sex couples to enter into a civil marriage."
Gay marriage is legal in Massachusetts, and nine other states have approved spousal rights in some form for same-sex couples.