The mood where I am is pretty ecstatic. Granted, I live in Grinnell (home to the ultra-liberal Grinnell College) and was born in Des Moines (which is probably the second most liberal place in the state outside of Grinnell). There was a huge rally in downtown Des Moines that attracted about 1000 people, and one in Iowa City drew 750. Local media coverage seems pretty positive, with only a few small counter-protests around the Supreme Court building during the ruling. The Twitter responses to the DM Register’s #iagaymarriage hashtag were generally happy, and everyone I’ve talked to is supportive. My mom’s coworker was one of the happy women in the picture that popped up on the front page of the NY Times and USA Today, which was awesome. Granted, I live in a sort of bubble of gay-friendliness, but a lot of people seem genuinely happy.

The funniest (and most infuriating) thing is hearing the news from the rest of the country, a lot of it from people who obviously have no idea what Iowa is really like. The reaction has ranged from “Oh really? Wow!” to “OMG, I can’t believe those corn-fed hicks got tricked into having gay marriage.” Come on, Iowa went to Obama by 54%! We have a Democratic governor, house, and senate. A pretty large majority of the state supports civil unions. Iowa is solidly moderate while leaning liberal. People from the coasts seem a lot more surprised than Iowans by this, that’s for sure.