The party platform approved at this week’s Democratic National Convention includes a statement in support of same-sex marriage. Convention delegate Dean Genth of Mason City is thrilled.
“That was one of the reasons I so wanted to be a delegate. It’s been a life-long dream for me to be a seated national delegate,” Genth says. “And it absolutely makes me disturbed and upset to see that Mitt Romney would destroy my marriage.”
The platform approved at last week’s Republican convention in Tampa expresses support for holding marriage between a man and a woman “as the national standard.” Genth, who is 62 years old, was married to Gary Swenson on May 31, 2009, shortly after the Iowa Supreme Court’s ruling which paved the way for same-sex marriage in Iowa.
“Iowans have had three years of unfettered same-gender marriages occurring now and people throughout the state look and realize the sky hasn’t fallen,” Genth says, “and we are really a beacon of light for marriage equality.”
Just four years ago the Democratic Party’s platform stopped short of endorsing same-sex marriage because the party’s nominee, Barack Obama, didn’t support it. This past May President Obama expressed his full support for same-sex marriage.
“We’re celebrating that,” Gent says. “It has taken the president a while to come out and speak in favor of marriage equality, but he is fully behind that now and so we stand with him solidly.”
Republicans in Iowa have launched a campaign to try to unseat one of the judges who joined the court’s unanimous ruling on gay marriage. The chairman of the Iowa GOP has urged Iowans to “vote no” on Justice David Wiggins in this year’s judicial retention election and three-time Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Vander Plaats has revived the campaign he ran in 2010 to vote three other justices off the bench because of the court’s 2009 ruling.