IOWA'S Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted 62-37 on Tuesday to approve a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage, undoing the controversial 2009 Iowa Supreme Court decision. Iowans likely won't get a chance to vote on the amendment, as the proposal is expected to die in the Democrat-controlled state Senate. This sort of ineffectual conservative political theatre is all-too-familiar these days. Whatever it was Iowa House Republicans were trying to achieve, it certainly wasn't to offer a soapbox to Zach Wahls, a 19-year-old engineering student at the University of Iowa. This is what it looks like to win an argument:

The vote in the Iowa House amounts to little more than the death throes of superstitious moral ignorance. Like it or not, Mr Wahls and his two moms are the future. I like it. I hope I run into this kid some day so I can buy him an illegal drink. Here's more good sense from Mr Wahls in a Daily Iowan op-ed from September.