Varnum v. Brien seems to have ruffled quite a few feathers. Since it’s unanimous opinion that equal protection mandates lifting the ban on same-sex marriage, Varnum has cost three justices their careers, and is apparently such an odium that members of the Iowa House are calling for more blood still.

But these Republican representatives do not understand the nature of their problem. It is not the justices standing in the way of a ban on same-sex marriage and domestic partnerships, it is the Equal Protection Clause of the Iowa Constitution.

The clause reads: “All laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation; the general assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens.”

Iowa is not the originator of equal protection, of course, there is a similar clause in the 14th Amendment of the federal constitution: “No state shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction equal protection of the laws.” Now, I am no lawyer, but those two clauses seem to express the exact same thing using different words.

I point this out because here in Iowa, as well as at the national level, there is an effort to amend our respective constitutions to put a kibosh on this neo-civil rights movement once and for all by placing the ban on same-sex marriage into our governing documents. Proponents of this opine that the “traditional family” is under siege and only this extreme maneuver can protect it. I think they are not going far enough.

The “traditional family” has been in trouble for a long time now. Time was, Mom and Dad would get married, have some kids and stay together no matter what. Things were good for a while, but then Betty Friedan came along and just had to get all melodramatic over some “problem that has no name.”

Next thing you know, everyone in America is getting a divorce. Divorce became so stylish, some people decided to have several. Children grew up in broken homes and went on to major in psychology and have premarital sex — sometimes without even getting married after the sex! New terms such as “baby daddy” had to be invented as the mutilation of the “traditional family” spiraled out of control.

Things were getting bad, but there were no dudes kissing each other, so we as a people got lazy as the devil stirred his equality cauldron, biding his time. But we should have been vigilant and learned the lessons of history: Whenever there’s a civil rights movement, tradition gets the shaft. I mean, last time around, women got pants. Pants! Where will it ever end?

But I have the solution! If marriage is too sacred, too traditional to share with homosexuals, the only way we can preserve it is to destroy it, allowing it to endure forever in a nostalgic recollection of the halcyon 1950s. After all, if we put a ban on gay marriage into our state or federal constitutions, equal protection will mandate a ban on all marriage anyway, right? It seems as though we should just cut to the quick and abolish marriage for everyone, as it is the only surefire way to protect our traditions from equality.