Finance disclosure forms show that the National Organization for Marriage has already committed over $15,000 into the Iowa Senate election between Republican Cindy Golding and Democrat Liz Mathis. NOM thinks that by eliminating the Democratic majority in the Iowa Senate, the state will have the support necessary to ban same-sex marriage in Iowa’s constitution, even though neither candidate is actively campaigning on the issue. Thousands of same-sex couples have married in Iowa since the Iowa Supreme Court overturned the ban on same-sex marriage in 2009, but NOM’s Brian Brown glibly suggests that rolling back that equality should be easy and noncontroversial:
BROWN: This is a pivotal election contest in our battle to allowing the people of Iowa the opportunity to vote to restore marriage. A proposed constitutional amendment on defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman enjoys broad-based, bi-partisan legislative and voter support, but is being prevented from coming to the floor of the Senate by Majority Leader Mike Gronstal. If Ms. Golding is successful in her election, we are hopeful that Senators will finally have the opportunity to vote on the marriage amendment, and we expect it to pass handily.
Though NOM boasts that half of Iowans would support such a ban, this is technically only true for Iowans over 65. In fact, voters age 18–29 would vote overwhelmingly against such a constitutional ban. But groups like NOM clearly resent that states like Iowa and New York now allow for same-sex marriage, such that they will spend as much money as they can trying to reverse those advances — no matter the odds.
NOM is a national organization funneling unwieldy sums of money into local elections to create a wedge issue. Such a display is nothing short of a petty, vindictive attempt to attack same-sex families and deconstruct the legal protections they now enjoy.