There’ll likely be a bit of a showdown early this morning in the Iowa Senate over the rules that govern how the senate operates, and the gay marriage issue is at the center of the dispute. Senator Kent Sorenson, a Republican from Indianola, has sponsored a resolution that calls for a statewide vote on a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage in Iowa.
“The real battle on the marriage issue could very well be when we debate the rules,” Sorenson says. That debate is scheduled to begin at 7 a.m. this morning when senators consider changes in their formal operating rules. The top Democrat in the senate says these changes merely put the informal practices of the senate down on paper.
Sorenson says it’s an attempt to block the parliamentary moves he had planned to try to force a vote in the senate on same-sex marriage.
“One way or another we’ll get a vote, even if I have to overrule the ruling of the chair which they say has never been done in the senate,” Sorenson says.
“But I’ll do that if I have to.” Sorenson served the past two years in the Iowa House and became a senator this year. The parliamentary move Sorenson described, trying to override a decision made by the senate’s president, has not been attempted in the senate in recent memory, although that sort of action is routine in the Iowa House.