NOM savages Iowa Sen. Mike Gronstal: 'You will vote wrong...because of your ugly motives';GOP attacks gay families: Complete list of Iowa Representatives who voted for HJR 6

The National Organization for Marriage wasted no time responding to Monday's HJR 6 hearing and vote. On NOM's blog, Brian Brown launched an unusually nasty attack on Mike Gronstal, the Iowa Senate majority leader:

After a reasoned debate, an overwhelming majority of the House voted to give to the people of Iowa the right to decide the question of gay marriage.
     And how did Mike Gronstal respond? “I cannot cooperate in taking away the rights of a significant number of Iowans,” he sententiously intoned, as he vowed to take away from every Iowa citizen the right to vote for marriage.
     Talk about a lack of self-reflection. If it were possible to imagine a paper in Des Moines like the New York Post (impossible to picture such a snarky delight in good-natured, responsible Iowa), the headline would read: “Mike Gronstal to Iowa Voters: Drop Dead!”
     Just a bunch of bigots, the voters of Iowa.
     The amazing thing is how very close Rep. Gronstal comes to saying just that, in barely-veiled terms.
     Gronstal vows to prevent a vote on a marriage amendment because he says it's not about him:  “It's about a significant portion of the citizens of this state that some people say shouldn't have the same rights that everybody else does,” he said.
     In other words, it's about you: You will vote wrong because of your wrong values, your ugly motives, your illegitimate vision for marriage.
     It's rare for an elected official to describe (even implicitly) the citizens of his own state in such dark terms.

NOM's hypocrisy is as shameless as it is boundless. On the same blog, on the same day NOM criticized the governor of Rhode Island for spending too much time on gay marriage,

“Lincoln Chafee has recently asked for more time to work on the state budget, but our question is why has he been wasting the state’s time pushing his same-sex marriage agenda instead of focusing on the economy?” said Christopher Plante, Executive Director of NOM-RI.

then simultaneously lauded Iowa's House for spending time on gay marriage even in the face of a huge snowstorm (Aksarbent saw five abandoned vehicles and a jackknifed semi off I-80 on the way back to Omaha from Des Moines)

The Iowa House voted overwhelmingly (62 to 37!) to refer the question of marriage to the people of Iowa--to give Iowa citizens the right to decide whether or not gay marriage should be part of Iowa's constitution...Iowans, on the eve of a humongous snowstorm that has shut down half the country, thronged the House hearing room, eager to at last be heard.

Gee, Brian and Maggie, we at Aksarbent may cry. (Actually the salt in tears might help melt the snow on our face.) In between tears, we would remind Maggie and Brian that NOM accusing Sen. Mike Gronstal of "ugly motives" is like, oh, hell, we don't know, maybe like a fat globule complaining about obesity.

Here are the Iowa General Assembly representatives (published in the Des Moines Register by Jason Clayworth) who voted in favor of House Joint Resolution 6 to allow voters amend Iowa's constitution to ban same sex marriage, civil unions and domestic partnerships. All are Republicans except Swaim, Muhlbauer and Quirk. If any of the following "represented" you, then why not tell them what you think of their vote here?

Dwayne Alons, Sioux

Richard Anderson, Page

Richard Arnold, Lucas

Chip Baltimore, Boone

Clel Baudler, Adair

Mark Brandenburg, Pottawattamie

Josh Byrnes, Mitchell

Royd Chambers, O’Brien

Peter Cownie, Polk

Dave Deyoe, Story

Cecil Dolecheck, Ringgold

Jack Drake, Cass

Greg Forristall, Pottawattamie

Joel Fry, Clarke

Julian Garrett, Warren

Pat Grassley, Butler

Chris Hagenow, Polk

Bob Hager, Allamakee

Mary Ann Hanusa, Pottawattamie

David Heaton, Henry

Lee Hein, Jones

Erik Helland, Polk

Lance Horbach, Tama

Daniel Huseman, Cherokee

Stewart Iverson, Wright

Ron Jorgensen, Woodbury

Jeff Kaufmann, Cedar

Jarad Klein, Washington

Kevin Koester, Polk

Mark Lofgren, Muscatine

Steven Lukan, Dubuque

Glen Massie, Warren

Linda Miller, Scott

Brian Moore, Jackson

Dan Muhlbauer, Crawford

Steven Olson, Clinton

Kraig Paulsen, Linn

Ross Paustian, Scott

Kim Pearson, Polk

Dawn Pettengill, Benton

Brian Quirk, Chickasaw

Scott Raecker, Polk

Dan Rasmussen, Buchanan

Henry Rayhons, Hancock

Walt Rogers, Black Hawk

Thomas Sands, Louisa

Renee Schulte, Linn

Jason Schultz, Crawford

Tom Shaw, Pocahontas

Jeff Smith, Dickinson

Chuck Soderberg, Plymouth

Kurt Swaim, Davis

Annette Sweeney, Hardin

Jeremy Taylor, Woodbury

David Tjepkes, Webster

Linda Upmeyer, Hancock

James Van Engelenhoven, Marion

Guy Vander Linden, Mahaska

Nick Wagner, Linn

Ralph Watts, Dallas

Matt Windschitl, Harrison

Gary Worthan, Buena Vista

Video: Iowa Senate Majority Leader Gronstal digs in his heels to defend gay Iowans; 'My wife says if I'm a dictator she's going to get a heck of a lot more shoes.'

Imelda Marcos, who is
NOT Mike Gronstal's wife

Interviewed on Iowa Public Television Friday evening, Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal absolutely refused to back away from his vow to block any senate move to put same-sex marriage to a state-wide vote.
     On Monday from 6:30 to 8:45 pm,  the Iowa house will hold hearings on HJR 6, which would ban any legal recognition of gay couples in Iowa. Depending on what PC and software you use, you may be able to listen to the hearings live. (Here at Aksarbent, Windows/Internet Explorer works, but Windows/Firefox doesn't.)

Excerpt from transcript published by Iowa Public Television:

Henderson: One reason there are three vacancies on the Iowa Supreme Court is that voters, many of whom were reacting to the court's 2009 ruling on same-sex marriage, voted three members off the court. This past week there was a scuffle over rules in the Iowa Senate but at the heart of that was the gay marriage issue. You've been accused of being a dictator and running the Senate like monarchy. Are you guilty as charged?

Gronstal and his clever wife, Connie (oneiowa)

Gronstal: My wife says if I'm a dictator she's going to get a heck of a lot more shoes. Listen, I was elected, I've been elected I can't even count the number of times from my district. Is this my sixth or seventh -- this is my seventh term in the Iowa Senate and I had one term in the House, that is not exactly a dictator that gets elected by the people in this district. So, I've campaigned repeatedly in my district, I get elected and then I get elected by my fellow members to be the majority leader.

Glover: But gay marriage opponents are going to find some way to bring this up every week and every time you have to fight it, block it, you spend a little political capital. How much political capital are you willing to spend? And how much political capital are you willing to ask your members to spend?

Gronstal: I don't give up what I believe in.

Glover: But what if it means you don't get elected or you go into a minority?

Gronstal: I accept that. I accept every vote I take up in that chamber can result in my defeat in the next election. It can result in a defeat by my fellow members to be their leader. I accept that reality. I think you've got to stand for something in politics and putting discrimination -- if I can vote to take away your rights by majority vote of the people of Iowa then I can vote to take away anybody's rights and maybe today one group feels like, well, we're the majority. Well, tomorrow they very well may be the minority. So, you know, what I tell people is, yeah, I worry about politics, I campaign hard to win my seat in Council Bluffs, I worry about that but I also shave every morning and I have to be able to look myself in the eye.

Glover: So, you're willing to accept the possibility of going to the minority?

Gronstal: Of course, I'm willing to accept the possibility of me losing and everybody else, these are 50 senate districts, everybody else has got to make their calculation as to how they win their races, how they campaign, everybody else has got to make that measure. This particular election, across the country, this was a nationalized election and it was more about Washington, D.C. than it was about Iowa. So, we're going to go through these campaigns and a year from now we're going to start the campaigns, I'm not interested in campaigning right now. I'm interested in governing and governing well and we're going to work with the new Governor and with the republican House and try to govern well.

Henderson: How intense is the pressure on Senate democrats? This past week you accused opponents of what you're trying to do in the Senate of lying which seemed an extraordinary step to take, to accuse your political opponents of lying.

Gronstal: No, I did not make any comment about any senator.

Henderson: I said your political opponents.

Gronstal: I said there will be people that will characterize a vote on the rules as a vote on something else and it was not a vote on something else, it was a vote on the rules, it was a vote on the traditions, the written rules and unwritten rules of the Senate that goes back for decades. That is what the vote was yesterday.