Oh, there's nothin' halfway about the Iowa way to treat you--when we treat you--which we may not do at all
"Iowa Stubborn" from "The Music Man"

So we're different people and have different creeds, and different people have different needs. It's obvious you hate me, though I've done nothing wrong. You don't even know me so what could I have done?
Depeche Mode, "People Are People"

Meredith Willson wasn't exactly extolling the virtues of his home state when he wrote "The Music Man." Still, there's a certain truth to his portrayal. Folks in the Midwest, even ones who consider themselves progressive, have a certain way about them. I know a little bit about this, as I spent the better portion of my youth in the midwest.

But I've also spent my entire post-college life in the eastern time zone, and most of that within a couple hours of the Atlantic coast, and I can say that Midwesterners are a different breed than most folks out here.

This is particularly obvious where I live inside the Beltway. An awful lot of folks here hail from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut or Massachusetts. And these folks do consider the Midwest and the South different countries. They really don't understand.

During the three years we've lived steps from our nation's capital, we've made a good many friends. And some of our best friends hail from Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Colorado. If you've got a Midwestern background, it's easy to pick out other folks who do as well. There's a certain no-nonsense attitude that we all share, regardless of our political beliefs.

But even those folks were stunned by the recent Iowa Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage in that state. On the surface (and even a little deeper), it's hard to see the logic. Especially for a unanimous decision. In the states where courts have decided this issue, the decisions have been split. But not in Iowa.

How could this happen? How could the entire Iowa Supreme Court decide that gay marriage was hunky-dory and ought to be allowed in the state?

Well, for starters, the decision is steeped in classic conservatism--the sort of "government should stay out of my business" conservatism that midwestern farmers have subscribed to for a couple centuries. Consider this exposition in the early part of the decision:

As other Iowans have done in the past when faced with the enforcement of a law that prohibits them from engaging in an activity or status enjoyed by other Iowans, the twelve plaintiffs [the people challenging the Iowa anti-same sex marriage law] turned to the courts to challenge the statute.

The decision returns to this theme again and again. It is obvious that the Iowa Supreme Court sees gay and lesbian issues in the same light as racial issues. Or, to put it another way, the Court believes that the government should treat law-abiding citizens as equals. This is an exceedingly conservative (almost to the point of being libertarian) point of view.

We are speaking about classical conservatism and not social conservatism, to be sure. Many classical conservatives (the late William F. Buckley being a perfect example) compromised their classical conservative values by latching on to social conservative causes. Buckley, famously, was a segregationist well into the 1960s, though he did recant eventually. Barry Goldwater, too, had his moments of social conservative madness, but before he died he advocated for allowing gays in the military. This small bit is from an op-ed piece published back when Bill Clinton proposed ending the military gay ban back in 1993:

Some in Congress think I'm wrong. They say we absolutely must continue to discriminate, or all hell will break loose. Who knows, they say, perhaps our soldiers may even take up arms against each other.

Well, that's just stupid.

This is a note-perfect conservative position. The government ought to stay out of private lives unless such an intrusion would serve an significant public good.

Social conservatives seem to argue that homosexuality is a disease that will destroy our society. Given that there have been homosexuals for an awfully long time (male homosexual relationships get oblique mentions in the Book of Genesis), it seems pretty obvious that humanity has prospered healthily despite the constant presence of so-called "degenerates.".

The Iowa decision also quotes Marbury v. Madison, the case where the Supreme Court of the United States declared that it had the right to declare laws unconstitutional. I'm not a regular reader of judicial opinions, but it seems to me that the Court (and Justice Mark Cady, who wrote the opinion and is not known to be particularly left-leaning in his views) paid close attention to dotting the i's and crossing the t's.

Going back to the civil rights theme, the decision also notes that the first recorded decision of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Iowa (published in 1839) held that slavery was, in fact, illegal in the territory.

There's a lot more legalese, of course. But the interesting thing about the opinion is that is keeps returning to the general theme that people are, indeed, people. That we we're all different, but that if nothing else in our lives treats us equally, our government ought to do so.

This is the same argument classical conservatives make against affirmative action and any number of other "reparative" government policies. It's an argument that is convincing much of the time. And it's that basic, and most conservative, argument that makes the Iowa decision so rock solid. And so, well, midwestern.

If there's one thing most folks in the midwest seem to know, it's the golden rule. Treat others as you'd like to be treated. Most folks believe that marriage is a good thing. And if it's good for straight couples, then it must be good for gay and lesbian couples.

Okay, then. You betcha.

Jon Worley doesn't necessarily believe that marriage is a good thing in theory, but he's happy with the one he's got.