Politics, not justice

By Tom Quiner

I’ve just become aware of a website called Justice, Not Politics.

The premise of the site is this:  if you vote against retaining the three Iowa supreme court justices up for retention (re-election), it is somehow unjust.

Why, then, does the Constitution even give us a vote on this issue if a contrary opinion of judges’ worthiness is automatically unjust?

The answer is: our vote against retaining Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, Justice Michael Streit, and Justice David Baker is not unjust, it is legal, and it is logical.

Think about it.  Marriage is the bedrock of civilization.  It is a beautiful institution established by civil and religious society to reproduce, sustain, and grow our communities.

Logically, it was defined as a union between a man and a woman by both civil and religious society since only unions between a man and a woman can reproduce and grow communities.  So it seems pretty illogical for the Iowa Supreme Court to say that traditional marriage laws are discriminatory. Even more, nothing in traditional marriage laws prevented men and women with homosexual desires from marrying.  By definition, though, they could only marry someone of the opposite gender.  By the same definition, men and women with heterosexual desires were prevented from marrying someone of the same gender.

The definition for marriage went further: one could not marry a blood relative, a minor, or more than one person.

The law was consistent, logical, just.

The law discriminated against certain behaviors, such as incest, polygamy, bigamy, adultery, and homosexuality, but not against persons.

So it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to a whole lot of folks that certain judges somehow found traditional marriage laws discriminatory.

Iowa would be better served with more level-headed thinkers on the court. Thank goodness Iowa’s constitution gives us the right to exercise this choice.  And a just choice it is.