The process of constitutional referendum in Iowa takes more time then in California, apparently.  Before an anti same-sex marriage amendment can be sent to the voters, it has to be approved by the legislature in two consecutive sessions.  The republicans in Iowa are complaining that democrats are being obstructionist for not taking up the matter Right Now, instead of next year.  The Senate majority leader fired back…

One of my daughters was in the workplace one day, and her particular workplace at that moment in time, there were a whole bunch of conservative, older men. And those guys were talking about gay marriage. They were talking about discussions going on across the country. And my daughter Kate, after listening for about 20 minutes, said to them: ‘You guys don’t understand. You’ve already lost. My generation doesn’t care.’ I think I learned something from my daughter that day, when she said that. And I’ve talked with other people about it and that’s what I see, Senator McKinley. I see a bunch of people that merely want to profess their love for each other, and want state law to recognize that. Is that so wrong? I don’t think that’s so wrong. As a matter of fact, last Friday night, I hugged my wife. You know I’ve been married for 37 years. I hugged my wife. I felt like our love was just a little more meaningful last Friday night because thousands of other Iowa citizens could hug each other and have the state recognize their love for each other. No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you.

I don’t think this is simply a matter of people now reading the tea leaves and deciding it’s safe to support gay Americans in their desire to get married, settle down and make lives together.  It’s people, slowly, one-by-one, getting sick and tired at long last of all the venom and hate.  People are getting tired of the culture war.  They just want to live with their neighbors in peace and good will.  Newsweek has an article up titled, The End Of Christian America, which argues thusly…

While we remain a nation decisively shaped by religious faith, our politics and our culture are, in the main, less influenced by movements and arguments of an explicitly Christian character than they were even five years ago. I think this is a good thing—good for our political culture, which, as the American Founders saw, is complex and charged enough without attempting to compel or coerce religious belief or observance. It is good for Christianity, too, in that many Christians are rediscovering the virtues of a separation of church and state that protects what Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island as a haven for religious dissenters, called "the garden of the church" from "the wilderness of the world." As crucial as religion has been and is to the life of the nation, America’s unifying force has never been a specific faith, but a commitment to freedom—not least freedom of conscience. At our best, we single religion out for neither particular help nor particular harm; we have historically treated faith-based arguments as one element among many in the republican sphere of debate and decision. The decline and fall of the modern religious right’s notion of a Christian America creates a calmer political environment and, for many believers, may help open the way for a more theologically serious religious life.

Emphasis mine.   You could argue that the religious right’s notion of a Christian America is about as authentic as its notion of Christianity.  But this is not the twilight of American Christianity.  If anything is coming to an end now, and I am not yet convinced it is, it’s the culture war.  Maybe.  Hopefully.  This is not a Christian nation.  It is a nation where Christians are free to worship according to their conscience.  But that is only because everyone else is too.  President Kennedy in 1960, when it was being asked openly whether or not a Catholic could be president of the United States, said "For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew—or a Quaker—or a Unitarian—or a Baptist… Today I may be the victim – but tomorrow it may be you – until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped."

Divide the nation, and we’ll have the bigger half, said Nixon’s aid Pat Buchannan, signaling the start of the culture war that has gone on to this day.  So the southern strategy was put into motion, to divide northern from southern democrats and working people from the democratic party.  So the Southern Baptist Convention began tearing their more liberal brothers and sisters from the fabric of the faith.  So the Episcopalians began to schism, rather then treat their gay neighbors as fellow human beings.  So the more liberal and diverse cities and states of the nation were told they weren’t the true America after all.  So gay people were made into demons and scapegoats for every social ill that the culture warriors brought down upon themselves.  For the glory of God the fabric of America was torn asunder and the glory that was America, its promise to all the peoples of the world of liberty and justice, was condemned as evil.  Only the righteous could have rights.  Only the elect could be full citizens.  The American Dream isn’t yours heathen…

No, Senator McKinley, I will not co-sponsor a leadership bill with you…

What’s happening is that people are sick of it now.  We want to be Americans again.