The XX Factor: What women really think.

The Good News From Iowa

I don't have much to add to E.J.'s and Kerry's posts on the good news about gay marriage in Iowa, but I would like to send a "ha-haaaaah" a la Nelson Muntz of Simpsons fame to all the more "progressive" states on the East and West coasts that got beaten to the punch by a bunch of corn-fed Midwesterners.

That's not to denigrate the hard work being done by activists and everyday citizens in places like Washington state (where I used to live), Oregon, California, and Vermont. I will admit that moving to the Seattle area in my early 20s and meeting, working, and socializing with more gays and lesbians made me more aware of the issues and more open-minded. (Though I hope that doesn't make it sound like I was a raging homophobe before; it was merely something I didn't think a lot about one way or the other.) And sometimes stereotypes are true: I cringed in 2004 when my home state of Ohio passed an anti-gay marriage amendment so restrictive that even the Republican governor came out against it.

That said, it's kind of nice when stereotypes don't hold true, when a state from flyover country can legalize gay marriage and make the rest of the country do a double-take. Because if Iowa can do it, why not everyone else?