Gay marriage and Iowa: Why's everyone so surprised?Once again, a humble Midwestern state is being laughed at by cosmopolitan smarty-pants on the East and West coasts. The victim this time, of course, is Iowa, which recently had the gall to legalize gay marriage and attempt to mess up decades of perfectly good Midwestern stereotyping.
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Linda Kerber, a history professor at the University of Iowa, has seen it countless times before. A former New Yorker herself who also lived for a while in California, she knows that many left and right coasters know nothing about Iowa or its long, progressive legal history.
"You don't need a passport to cross the Hudson River, but many think you do," Kerber said. "These New Yorkers who say 'Iowa? What?', they're being very provincial. They need a passport to go to France, and they go to France a lot more than they go to Iowa."
Consider these facts Kerber shared about our neighboring state:
In 1847, the University of Iowa became the first public university in the country to give women unfettered access to higher education.
The state did away with racial barriers to marriage in 1851, more than 100 years before the U.S. Supreme Court would ban miscegenation statutes nationwide.
In 1868, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools are a denial of equal protection of the laws. Brown vs. Board of Education, which did away with school segregation nationally, didn't come down until 1954.
And in 1873, the Iowa Supreme Court ruled against racial discrimination in public accommodations. It would be almost 100 years before the U.S. Supreme Court would reach the same decision.
etc.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-defending-iowa-web,0,2979128.story:thumbsup: :)
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