DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The same-sex marriage debate will play out in a courtroom in the Heartland this week as the Iowa Supreme Court hears arguments in a challenge to the state’s same-sex marriage ban.

If the Iowa court rules in favor of the half dozen same-sex couples who filed the lawsuit, it would be the fourth state behind Massachusetts, California and Connecticut to uphold the right for same-sex couples to legally marry. In California, however, voters changed course last month, opting to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage.

The Iowa case has spent more than three years wending its way through the legal system, and it could take a year or more for the Supreme Court to issue a ruling after hearing oral arguments Tuesday morning.

Camilla Taylor, an attorney for Lambda Legal, a gay rights organization representing the gay and lesbian couples behind the lawsuit, said Iowa is a fitting spot for the issue to be decided. She said the state has historically been a leader in supporting minority and women’s rights.

“Iowa has an opportunity to play the role that it often has played in the past – being at the forefront of civil rights struggles – often long before other states were willing to be similarly courageous,” she said. “This is not an uncomfortable role for Iowans, and we are looking at them to make a reality out of the promise of equality in the Iowa constitution.”

Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in 2005 on behalf of the six Iowa couples who were denied marriage licenses, as well as three of the couples’ children. It names former Polk County recorder and registrar Timothy Brien.

The lawsuit prompted a ruling in August 2007 by Polk County District Court Judge Robert Hanson, who said a state law allowing marriage only between a man and a woman violates the constitutional rights of due process and equal protection.

The ruling prompted nearly two dozen people to apply for marriage licenses, but only one couple managed to get married before Hanson stayed his decision the next day. The marriage of Sean Fritz and Tim McQuillan of Ames stands, but its validity could depend on whether the state’s high court sides with the Polk County judge.

The Polk County attorney’s office declined to comment on the pending case. In court documents, it criticized the lawsuit, saying it’s an attempt to change the way public policy is made.

“Plaintiffs seek to have this court establish that the courts and not the Legislature should make public policy for the State of Iowa by redefining marriage to be something totally different from what it has ever seen,” the county attorney’s office argued.

Maggie Gallagher, president of the Manassas, Va.-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, a conservative group that opposes same-sex marriage, said Americans have repeatedly made clear that they want traditional marriage protected.

“I think it has to be clear to judges that Americans do care about this issue, and in 30 out of 30 cases, when they’ve been allowed to vote, they say that same-sex marriage is not a civil right,” she said. “Americans don’t think that two men in a union are just the same as a husband and wife, and they don’t really appreciate the idea that the legal system is going to force them” to accept that.

However, Aderson Francois, a law professor who heads Washington, D.C.-based Howard University’s Civil Rights Clinic, said while a majority of Americans may be against same-sex marriage, it should be left to the courts to decide issues of constitutional equality.

“It doesn’t really matter whether a majority of people want to deny that right, the constitution simply doesn’t provide for that,” he said.