Politics aside, gay marriage gets a boost - Illinois senator, rival both push it -- that's a good thing

Politics aside, gay marriage gets a boost - Illinois senator, rival both push it -- that's a good thing
BY MARK BROWN
Copyright by The Sun-Times
October 1, 2009
http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/1800741,CST-NWS-brown01.article


A state senator from Edgewater said she plans today to introduce a measure to legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois, the first time such a bill would have been up for consideration in the Senate.
Sen. Heather Steans, a first-term Democrat whose district encompasses the state's largest concentration of gay and lesbian residents, said her "Equal Marriage Act" will open a new front in the effort to provide full legal rights to same-sex couples.

Until now, gay-rights activists in Illinois have focused their efforts on gaining approval in the Illinois House for a "civil unions" bill that essentially would provide same-sex couples with most of the basic rights that accrue from marriage -- without some of the controversy of calling it that.

The civil unions bill, sponsored by Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), has always started in the House under the theory that's where it would have its best chance for passage before moving to the Senate. But the results have been frustrating. While the measure has been approved by a House committee, it has languished without a vote by the full chamber as backers tried to enlist the last few votes.

Harris also has sponsored a same-sex marriage bill, but there has never been any serious effort to advance it in a legislative body loath to approve the compromise step of civil unions.

Now Harris says he supports Steans' plan to move forward in the Senate with a same-sex marriage bill patterned after his.

Harris said he still plans to push the civil unions legislation when the General Assembly returns for its veto session this month, but suggested that if the measure fails again, proponents may shift strategy next year and direct all of their efforts toward winning full marriage rights. After all, nobody's trying to hide the fact that's the ultimate goal.

"Lesbian and gay couples should be getting the same rights as me and my husband," Steans said.

A complication here is that Steans, elected just last year to finish out the term of retired Sen. Carol Ronen, is facing a potentially tough re-election campaign against an openly gay opponent in February's Democratic primary.

Steans said her decision to introduce the marriage legislation at this time, even though she has no intention of moving forward with it until the new legislative session convenes next year, is unrelated to her campaign against Jim Madigan, a former staff attorney for Lambda Legal.

But Madigan, who also did a stint as interim director of Equality Illinois and actually helped draft the civil unions bill, doesn't seem so sure.

"It seems to me to be a little bit conveniently timed," Madigan said. "These issues should not be a way of scoring political points."

Nonetheless, he said he welcomes Steans' decision to introduce the marriage bill and hopes to see it approved.

To be clear, my interest here is in keeping some attention on an issue that I believe is important, not in getting in the middle of a state legislative race in which I have little knowledge and no favorite.

Last spring, I made the mistake of forecasting that the Legislature appeared to be on the verge of finally approving the civil unions bill -- or so its backers thought. So I'm cutting back on predictions concerning our closely controlled lawmakers, as I should have learned years ago.

But I've been saying for more than six years now that same-sex marriage eventually would become law, as it should, and that's a prediction to which I'll stick, so consider this another status report.

Steans and Harris both think we're close to reaching critical mass in Illinois on same-sex marriage. There was the Iowa Supreme Court decision earlier this year that allows gay couples in our neighbor state to wed, which followed close on the heels of the Vermont Legislature being the first to approve same-sex marriage.

Just a few weeks ago, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Alexi Giannoulias staked out an early position in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage and in repealing the federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman. One of his opponents, former city Inspector General David Hoffman, is taking the same stance.

By the way, I erroneously reported that Giannoulias was the first major statewide candidate in Illinois to take this position, overlooking then-Chicago Park District President Gery Chico, who did so in the 2004 Democratic primary for the Senate -- on his way to finishing fifth with 4 percent of the vote. Giannoulias and Hoffman should fare better.

"This is the trend. This is where society is going," Harris said. "Illinois needs to be at the head of the trend, not at the tail."