The Iowa Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage in that state took effect Monday morning, and within an hour, the first couple to take advantage of it had wed.
Melisa Keeton and Shelley Wolfe were married at 9 a.m. in a ceremony at a government building in Des Moines, the Associated Press reports. State law normally requires a three-day waiting period before marriage licenses take effect, but a judge waived that requirement in this case.
This is hardly the end of the fight over marriage in Iowa, though. Conservative legal groups are preparing for battle, with one seeking a plaintiff for a test case that would, they hope, establish a precedent allowing a county clerk to refuse a marriage license to a same-sex couple on the basis of their own conscience. And, given the state's prominence in presidential primaries -- and evangelicals' influence in the Republican caucuses in Iowa -- we can expect to hear more about this once the race for the GOP nomination kicks off.
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