Supporters of same-sex marriage in Illinois were pleased when they read, on Tuesday, what State Senate President John Cullerton said, in an interview: “The freedom to marry in Illinois is inevitable,” as the bill passed through the Senate Executive Committee, that day, and where he also noted that Illinois was now “on the clear path to recognition of the freedom to marry in Illinois.”
The bill almost led to a vote during the recent lame duck session, but the legitimate absences of key supporters led it to be tabled until after the holiday recess, and when the new state legislature met.
In a press release, Illinois Unites for Marriage, member organizations, including, Equality Illinois, noted that “polling shows a majority of Illinoisans likewise support it. Every major newspaper in Illinois, including the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Herald, the Peoria Journal Star, the Springfield Journal-Register and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has endorsed the legislation.”
Conservative support has also come from Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady “who said in January that, ‘giving gay and lesbian couples the freedom to get married honors the best conservative principles. It strengthens families and reinforces a key Republican value –that the law should treat all citizens equally.’”
And, today Gov. Pat Quinn in his State of the State address today, noted that "Our Illinois is not a land of discrimination.”
With such wholehearted support, it seems that as State Rep. Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) noted in an earlier interview with me, that “When we get the 60 votes needed, we’ll go with it, that’s how it works.”
But, with the recent remarks of the Roman Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal Francis George, where he said that same-sex marriage could not be truly consummated; and last year, on Christmas, where he compared the gay rights movement with that of the Ku Klux Klan, has prompted a planned demonstration against the Cardinal this Sunday by the Gay Liberation Network and the Rainbow Sash Movement; a grass-roots movement within the Catholic Church noted for its protests against the Catholic Churches protest against same-sex unions, and inclusion of LGBT people in the church.
In a press release today, the movement noted, “it is when church leaders attempt to shore up that discrimination in civil law, imposing their backward beliefs and strictures on Catholics and non-Catholics alike, that they especially become a target of protest and ridicule.”
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