DES MOINES, IOWA—There were dogs in rainbow skirts and a guy in a guayabera with a scarlet macaw on his head. It was Pride Day in Des Moines, this year celebrating the 10th anniversary of marriage equality in Iowa, which was as hard-won a victory here as it was anywhere else in the nation in the days before the Obergefell decision in the Supreme Court cleared all the barriers in 2015.

For example, in 2009, the Iowa state supreme court unanimously upheld a lower court decision that said to deny marriage equality was to violate the state constitution. The following November, a container ship full of conservative dark money sailed up the Des Moines River and swamped three of the state supreme justices who'd voted for the plaintiffs off the bench. That left everything in legislative limbo until the Nine Wise Souls in Washington ended the battle from afar.

It was hard to imagine on Saturday that all of that was only a decade ago. It was hard to remember on Saturday that as recently as May of 2012, preparing to run for re-election, an extremely reasonable and notably Not Insane president named Barack Obama explained painfully how his view on marriage equality had "evolved." On Saturday, there was simply another gathering of voters in Iowa, this one with dogs and parrots and balloons for the kids, on the front lawn of the Iowa state capitol, and Democratic candidates for president stopped by the way they always do in the summer before another outbreak of the Iowa caucuses. Bernie Sanders spoke to an enthusiastic group of followers. Beto O'Rourke stopped by, chatting briefly with John Delaney before taking the stage. Earlier on Saturday, O'Rourke had run in a 5K road race held as part of the Pride Day. On Friday night, Kirsten Gillibrand mixed drinks at a gay bar. This is how you campaign in Iowa in 2019. This is how you have to campaign in Iowa in 2019, and that is a good thing. O'Rourke said:

Marriage equality in Iowa, and marriage equality in the United States, the credit should not be given principally to those Supreme Court justices who made those decisions, but to every single person who for decades has been marching and struggling and fighting for their full civil rights in this country. And so I want to thank you for that.

Beto O’Rourke limbered up before the Pride Fest Fun Run 5K in Des Moines Saturday. Scott Olson Getty Images

But the spirit of the day, and the length of the journey that so many had taken to the day, was best expressed by Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, a married gay man whose husband, Chasten, has become one of the informal supporting actors in the upcoming drama along with Elizabeth Warren's Aunt Bee and Amy Klobuchar's Uncle Dick From the Deer Stand. This is what Buttigieg said on Saturday:

Coming out did not come easily to me. I took my time. I'm not sure I ever would have got there if I hadn't deployed. While I was overseas, I realized that it made no sense to be in the position of potentially being killed in action and being a grown man and the mayor of a city, and have no idea what it was like to be in love. So my reasoning was very simple—I just wanted to start dating.

Then he told a joke, and it is one of the oldest jokes in any politician's repertoire. For example, long ago, President John Kennedy would introduce himself at major events as the man who had accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy. It always brought down the house. This is the joke Buttigieg told on Saturday.

"I think I am best known as the husband of Chasten."

Everybody laughed.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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