Sharon Malheiro, an attorney whose career of fighting “for the underdog” spanned decades and who secured some of the most significant civil rights victories in Iowa, died on Sunday night. Her death was announced on social media by One Iowa, the nonprofit advocacy organization for LGBTQ Iowans she co-founded in 2006. “Sharon’s legacy of service, […]
Varnum v. Brien
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Gov. Reynolds promises Iowa will ‘act as a counterweight’ to the Biden administration at rightwing Christian summit
Gov. Kim Reynolds began her speech at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines on Friday by explaining she had a cold. The cold affected her voice, but did nothing to diminish the enthusiasm she showed at the annual meeting of the right-wing Christian lobbying group the Family Leader (inexplicably stylized as THE FAMiLY LEADER), […]
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Iowa City’s first LGBTQ safe space
On May 1, 2009, a charter bus rolled into downtown Iowa City, packed with lesbian and gay couples from Missouri (and a rabbi or two). A few weeks earlier, Iowa had become the first state in the Midwest to recognize same-sex marriage. The busload of couples had come to the Hawkeye State to get hitched. […]
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David Wiggins, acting chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, announces his resignation
David Wiggins, the acting chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, announced his retirement on Friday. According to a statement posted on the court’s website, Wiggins will step down on March 13. His current term was scheduled to expire in December. Wiggins was appointed to the court in 2003 by Gov. Tom Vilsack, a Democrat.
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Ten years of marriage equality and 150 years of women lawyers: Important Iowa anniversaries in 2019
That Iowa has been a leader in establishing basic rights, which other Americans later take for granted, almost always comes as a surprise to non-Iowans. But this year marked major anniversaries for at least two instances in which Iowa showed that kind of leadership. The 10th anniversary of the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision in Varnum […]
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Iowa Chief Justice Mark Cady, author of the landmark decision legalizing same-sex marriage in Iowa, has died
Mark Cady, chief justice of the Iowa Supreme Court, died on Friday. The death of the 66-year-old justice was announced by his family on Friday night. “Tonight, the state lost a great man, husband, father, grandfather, and jurist. Chief Justice Mark Cady passed away unexpectedly this evening from a heart attack,” the family said
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Jury finds Gov. Terry Branstad violated the state’s LGBTQ discrimination laws, awards former employee $1.5 million
Gov. Terry Branstad illegally discriminated against the former Iowa Workers’ Compensation Commissioner Christopher Godfrey when he slashed Godfrey’s salary in 2011 in an attempt to force Godfrey to resign, a Polk County jury decided on Monday. The jury agreed with Godfrey that Branstad had singled him out because Godfrey is gay, and awarded him $1.5 million in damages.
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Remembering Varnum v. Brien, the case that brought marriage equality to Iowa
How a divorce helped kick-start marriage equality in Iowa By Paul Brennan The path to marriage equality in Iowa started with a divorce. Kimberly Brown and Jennifer Perez traveled from their home in western Iowa to Vermont in 2002 to be joined in a civil union, a substitute for traditional civic marriages Vermont created for […]
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‘It rocked my world’: Catching up with the Grays, one of the first lesbian couples married in Iowa
Decades before Lois and Karen Gray became one of the first same-sex couples in Iowa to legally marry, they were Iowa farm girls, courting each other on the campus of Grand View College (now University) in Des Moines. In the mid-1980s, in fairly quick succession, the women became friends, then roommates, then girlfriends. This evolution […]
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A conversation with Kate and Trish Varnum, 10 years after Varnum v. Brien
Cedar Rapids couple Kate and Trish Varnum celebrate their 18th, 15th and 10th anniversaries this year: they’ve been together since 2001, had a religious marriage ceremony in 2004 and were legally married in 2009, after a landmark Iowa Supreme Court case that bore their name. Since the April 3, 2009 ruling in Varnum v. Brien, […]
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The BarbouRoskes, plaintiffs in Varnum v. Brien, reflect on Iowa’s fight for marriage equality
The day the Iowa Supreme Court announced they’d made a decision in Varnum v. Brien, the landmark case that would determine whether to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa, Dawn and Jennifer BarbouRoskes’ two young daughters had covered their faces in temporary tattoos. “Jen’s at work and I’m scrubbing their faces,” Dawn recalled. “Bre had fallen […]
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How a divorce helped kick-start marriage equality in Iowa
The path to marriage equality in Iowa started with a divorce. Kimberly Brown and Jennifer Perez traveled from their home in western Iowa to Vermont in 2002 to be joined in a civil union, a substitute for traditional civic marriages Vermont created for same-sex couples in 2000.
