You ought to give Iowa a try
I was delighted to read this evening that a judge in Polk County, Iowa, the most populous county in the state (and the location of the state capital, Des Moines), has declared that Iowa's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, and that the county should start accepting marriage-license applications from same-sex couples (who live anywhere in Iowa) starting immediately. "The [county recorder's] office, which opens at 7:30 a.m. Friday, is expecting a rush of applications," says an AP article.
After an application is accepted, it takes three days to issue a license. The county has requested a stay of the ruling until the county's appeal to the Iowa Supreme Court can be heard; there'll probably be a hearing on whether to grant the stay next week. So depending on the timing of various things, it's possible that there'll be stay before any actual marriage licenses can be issued.
Still, I'm really pleased, and it was a nice surprise; I was not expecting Iowa to be the next state in line for same-sex marriage.
Bizarrely, a two-page article about this in the Chicago Tribune, which is where I got most of the above info, vanished from their website at some point in the past three hours or so, replaced by a different article containing only a two-paragraph blurb. I can't figure out what happened. Here's the New York Times article instead. It's an AP article, and appears to be identical (or at least almost identical) to the one I saw on the Tribune site.
