Apr 08 2009
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Matt Coles: The Legal Importance of the Iowa Marriage Decision
Matt Coles is the Director of the ACLU’s LGBT & AIDS Project. He says that what sets the Iowa marriage decision apart is a passage at the end where it addresses the unspoken reason many people oppose same-sex marriage: religious opposition.
The Court says, “State government can have no religious views, either directly or indirectly, expressed through its legislation. This proposition is the essence of the separation of church and state.”
Coles says, “That proposition ought to be obvious, but in the last 25 years, it seems almost to have disappeared from civic discourse in America. … It is that down-to-earth honesty that will, I believe, make this a deeply influential opinion.”
