The Bible Bench (Mother Jones) [View All]

[ruggerson]

The jihad isn't over there.

It's right here.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/05/bible_bench.html

News: The message from fundamentalists to state jurists is clear: Judge conservatively, lest ye not be a judge.

By Margaret Ebrahim

May/June 2006 Issue

ON THE MORNING of November 14, 2003, Iowa District Judge Jeffrey Neary met with lawyers to approve routine court orders. One of the cases before him was a divorce. It was uncontested, and Neary didn’t think twice about signing the papers dissolving the marriage. Then he glanced at the couple’s names and realized the breakup was anything but typical. He turned to the lawyer for one of the parties and exclaimed, “These two people are ladies!” Neary had just signed divorce papers for Kimberly Brown and Jennifer Perez, a lesbian couple who had entered into a same-sex civil union in Vermont. Same-sex unions are not recognized in Iowa, but instead of withdrawing the order, Neary amended the paperwork to indicate that he had terminated a civil union and settled property disputes between the women.

When Neary’s decision made the news a few weeks later, Christian conservatives were enraged. In late January, a score of protesters picketed the Sioux City courthouse, waving banners that said “God Hates Fags” and denouncing Neary as a “liberal activist” and a member of an “antichristic court.”

“I was just trying to settle a dispute between two people,” Neary says. But he made his decision just days before the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the legality of same-sex marriage in that state. Conservative Christians were ready for a fight.

In late summer 2004, Neary began preparing his race for retention. Because voters simply mark yes or no for one candidate, he hadn’t planned on running much of a campaign—Iowa judges typically win retention races with more than 75 percent of the vote. But the protests against him revived. The Iowa Family Policy Center, a local Christian activist group, summoned Colorado evangelical leader James Dobson to speak at a rally exhorting Iowans to throw Neary out of office. “Now judges are telling us they want to redefine the definition of marriage,” Dobson told the crowd. “We say not in our lifetime!” The rally was followed by radio ads and brochures depicting Neary as an out-of-control liberal hell-bent on making Iowa the national capital of same-sex marriage. In response, Neary offered to talk to anyone who wanted to know why he’d terminated the same-sex union, and even asked to meet with Dobson, though Neary later said, “I never got a phone call.”

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