By Jennifer Wessner
SPRINGFIELD — The gay marriage debate came to the Illinois House on Wednesday when state Rep. Deborah Mell, D-Chicago, announced her engagement to her partner of more than five years, Christin Baker.
Mell, the sister-in-law of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, is one of only two openly gay members of the Illinois House. She used the announcement to call for her fellow lawmakers to legalize gay marriage in Illinois.
Mell said she proposed to Baker on April 10 in Chicago at The Signature Room in the John Hancock Center, and they have started planning the wedding.
Mell called the engagement "bittersweet" in light of Illinois' gay marriage laws.
Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, the other openly gay lawmaker in the legislature, congratulated Mell on her engagement, but expressed frustration that Illinois laws against gay marriage will keep Mell from enjoying the same rights heterosexuals enjoy.
Harris has been a vocal advocate for legalizing gay marriage in the state. He has introduced legislation over the last several years that would allow same-sex union marriages to be recognized in the state. But those efforts have received little legislative support.
Most recently, he introduced a plan in February 2009 that would have given civil unions the same legal standing as heterosexual marriage. The bill was voted down on the House floor. A similar piece of legislation, the Equal Marriage Act, is still pending in the Illinois Senate.
Gay marriage continues to be controversial in the state.
David E. Smith, the executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, said he disagrees with Mell and Harris and believes the voters have already settled the issue.
"We respectfully disagree with Deborah Mell in the effort to redefine marriage," Smith said. "The American people have overwhelmingly rejected the idea of counterfeit marriage."
However, Harris told Mell he is still optimistic that one day the state will give gay couples equal rights.
Gov. Pat Quinn also offered his congratulations to Mell, who he said he has known "since she was knee-high to a duck."
Hawaii has moved in the right direction.
My coming out 1997, as a gay Catholic priest was not about me. Like Galileo, all I have is a little piece of truth about the facts of growing up gay.
Marriage Equality will not become a reality until people learn that its most vital purpose is that it restores the hope of love to children in early childhood essential to their development and wellbeing for life. Without Marriage Equality we teach children how to hate love and how to be mean and indifferent to people as adults. With all due respect, without Marriage Equality we would teach them in much the same way as has been shown by Benedict XVI and the hierarchy, especially in their lack of care and protection of children for decades.
http://fathermartykurylowicz.blogspot.com/2010/04/marriage-equality-restores-hope-of-love.html
Benedict XVI and the hierarchy failure to accept responsibility for decades of child sexual abuse cover-ups have finally caught up with them. These last couple of months have been and continues to be a critical time to put out valid information about human sexuality, to be the voice of sanity and clarity and not allow misinformation about sexual orientation to be associated falsely with the child sexual abuse cases and cover-ups that are overwhelming the Church at the highest level right now. It is possible that campaigns against Marriage Equality have been a vehicle to convey certain people into political office as well as to maintain cover-ups in the Church hierarchy regarding decades of child sexual abuse. Moreover, the misuse of Marriage Equality can be severely harmful to children who grow up to be gay. Some Church and State leaders can be so inhuman in their efforts to gain power that they tend to care less that kids are being hurt!!!
Fr. Marty Kurylowicz, Thalamus Center, Early Childhood Psychological Development – Canton MI