DES MOINES — The two young men in neat oxford shirts stand on the shady front lawn and hug. Brand-new wedding bands gleam on their ring fingers. Cameras click. They are oblivious. Happy. And legally married.
"This is it," Sean Fritz told Tim McQuillan in August, after the rapid-fire ceremony in a Unitarian minister's yard here in the middle of middle America. "I love you."
As Iowans ponder whom to support in the Jan. 3 caucuses, their state is the first in the heartland to even consider legalizing same-sex marriage -- placing Iowa again in the vanguard and reminding the Democratic presidential hopefuls that progressives here help shape history.
Much of coastal blue-state America has long dismissed the Hawkeye State as it has the rest of "flyover country" -- all conservatives, cornfields and clapboard churches -- ignoring a succession of cultural and legal firsts and liberal politicians who made their way to Washington.
The tradition includes Henry A. Wallace, the vice president whom Franklin D. Roosevelt jettisoned because of the Iowan's extreme left leanings, and Sen. Tom Harkin, who bragged in a recent campaign e-mail that "in the Congress, there is no one who has stood stronger against President Bush than I have."
Iowa public schools were desegregated nearly a century ahead of 1954's Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka. The state was the first to admit a woman to the bar, in 1869 -- three years before the Supreme Court ruled that states could deny women the right to practice law. Iowa City, with its renowned writing program, became a nuclear-free zone even before Berkeley. And there is no death penalty in the state.
"I spend a lot of time talking to people about how Iowa is not like the states that surround it," said Lisa Hardaway, spokeswoman for Lambda Legal, a gay-rights group that brought the lawsuit that led to the Fritz-McQuillan nuptials. "It's not like Nebraska."
Iowa's long-standing progressive tradition regularly makes its mark on politics. As often as not, caucusgoers deny victory to the perceived centrist running for the Democratic nomination and give their nod to more-liberal contenders. Think 1984, when Walter F. Mondale beat John Glenn, or 1988, when Richard A. Gephardt bested Michael S. Dukakis.
New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the national front-runner in polls, is struggling here in a tight race against rivals Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, who are both perceived to be more liberal.
