Justin's Political Corner

With just days left before the Illinois General Assembly ends its regular session, activists are scrambling to get a gay marriage bill to the finish line.

Supporters have racked up an impressive number of high-profile victories in recent months, including adding three states to the marriage equality column through the ballot box in November – Washington, Maine and Maryland – and an equal number through legislative votes held this month, the latest state being Minnesota. Wedding bells will also soon ring for gay couples in Rhode Island and Delaware.

(Another victory came earlier this year in Colorado, where lawmakers approved a civil unions law, possibly the best outcome for marriage equality supporters until a constitutional amendment is repealed.)

With Democrats in control of both chambers of the General Assembly and Democratic Governor Pat Quinn in support, the move from civil unions to full marriage wasn’t expected to come down to the wire in Illinois. After all, Rep. Greg Harris, the sponsor of the civil unions bill in the House, committed his support for a marriage bill even before the civil unions law took effect in 2011.

The marriage bill already has had one false start. Last year during a brief lame-duck session the bill was added to the agenda in the Senate but never came up for a vote. Its champion in the chamber, Democratic Senator Heather Steans, said that time was the main factor behind the decision to postpone a vote.

Six weeks later, on Valentine’s Day, the Senate approved the measure. A House panel agreed a month later, leaving only one hurdle for the marriage bill to clear.

H/T: OnTopMag.com

Former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis told ThinkProgress this week that they support marriage equality. With their endorsements, every living former Democratic presidential nominee is now on record in support of same-sex marriage.

Every other living Democratic nominee had previously made their support explicit.

The list includes:

• 1. Former President Jimmy Carter (1976 and 1980). Carter said last year “Homosexuality was well known in the ancient world, well before Christ was born and Jesus never said a word about homosexuality. In all of his teachings about multiple things — he never said that gay people should be condemned. I personally think it is very fine for gay people to be married in civil ceremonies.”
• 2. Former Vice President Walter Mondale (1984). Mondale, who invoked civil rights legend Hubert Humphrey as he campaigned against last year’s proposed Minnesota marriage inequality amendment, said in an e-mail that he not both “opposed the constitutional amendment that would prevent legalizing gay marriage and I supported the legalization of gay marriage adopted this past week in Minnesota.
• 3. Former Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis (1988). Dukakis confirmed his support to ThinkProgress in a May 12 e-mail.
• 4. Former President Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996). Clinton announced his support for marriage equality in 2009 and has actively campaigned for it since. Clinton had previously signed the anti-gay 1996 Defense of Marriage Act.
• 5. Former Vice President Al Gore (2000). Gore delivered a “forceful endorsement” of marriage equality in 2008, saying “gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women — to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join together in marriage.”
• 6. Secretary of State John Kerry (2004). Kerry told the blog Blue Mass Group in 2008 that he “absolutely” supported civil marriage equality. He explained his evolution in a 2011 Boston Globe op-ed entitled “Politicians have the right to evolve on gay marriage.”
• 7. President Barack Obama (2008 and 2012). President Obama made his historic announcement one year ago, telling ABC’s Robin Roberts: “I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.

Former Senator George McGovern (D-SD), the 1972 Democratic nominee, also endorsed marriage equality prior to his death last year. He told the Daily Republic last May: “I’m a ‘conservative’ when it comes to marriage. I think if two people love each other, are living together and having sex, they ought to get married.”

Follow Think Progress on Tumblr at: http://think-progress.tumblr.com/

H/T: Think Progress LGBT

Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage nine years ago on Friday, after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state may not “deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.” The state Legislature was given 180 days to take action. It didn’t, and on May 17, 2004, Marcia Kadish and Tanya McCloskey — a couple who had been together for 18 years — tied the knot in the first gay marriage ceremony in the United States.

H/T: Huffington Post

Springfield, IL — The Illinois House has just over two weeks to vote on SB10, or the Religious Freedom and Marriage Act, or the legislation is in danger of dying. If a vote does not take place by May 31, the end of the current session, supporters of the bill will essentially have to start from scratch.

Members of the activist coalition lobbying on behalf of SB10 said they are confident their work has proceeded as far as it can go, but the bill’s supporters in the House say they’re still trying to shore up more support from legislators.

“We’re in a place where we feel we’ve done as much as we can do, said James Bennett, Midwest Regional Director for Lambda Legal, who has been lobbying for the legislation. ”We’ve made phone calls, people have visited—we’re comfortable that we’ve done our part.”

Bernard Cherkasov, CEO of Equality Illinois, said he “did not want to imagine” what would happen should the bill be allowed to languish. The Coalition has “done what it’s supposed to do with this, so we would not want to be back to ground zero.”

But Cherkasov said he was confident that Illinois would share in some of the momentum from marriage equality victories the LGBT community has enjoyed in Rhode Island, Delaware and Minnesota. ”The truth is, those victories came about from momentum contributed from what we are building in Illinois, and our victory will come from momentum from those states—there is national momentum on this issue.”

A vote is unlikely this week—Friday is a “getaway” day for legislators, and major legislation is rarely decided on those days. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) would not disclose the current tally of votes. Unofficial counts have fluctuated since March, but a recent tally had the measure just within the 60 needed number of votes. 

“When it goes up on the board, it will go up with the necessary number of votes,” Harris told ChicagoPride.com Thursday. 

H/T: GoPride.com

Minnesota-based Religious Right activist/rock star Bradlee Dean went ballistic on his radio show yesterday in response to his state’s new marriage equality law. Dean warned that Gov. Mark Dayton, who signed the same-sex marriage bill into law, is at “war with God” and is “about to find out what it’s like as to what the fallout is when you throw rocks towards God, he’s going to learn how gravity works.” He added that Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who backed his state’s marriage equality law, and other pro-gay rights “criminals” will face divine justice as well.

Dean even seems to believe that every gay person in the country showed up for yesterday’s celebration of the marriage equality law in order to “push their propaganda and their agendas on the American people,” just as Saul Alinsky commanded.

“They come from all over the country to do this so what you’ve seen was probably the whole lump of the population of the homosexual community in the United States of America,” Dean said.

After lamenting about the “pansies” in the Minnesota legislature, Dean and his co-hosts began discussing the “Safe and Supportive Minnesota Schools Act,” an LGBT-inclusive anti-bullying bill, which he said is proof that “radical homosexuals” are part of a “UN global agenda” to “destroy the family.”

Dean then channeled his inner-Antoine Dodson and claimed that gays are coming after your wife and kids: “Go home, look at your wife and look at your kids, because now that’s what they’re coming for.”

He even lashed out at “my good friend Alex Jones,” who is apparently not anti-gay enough for Dean, despite his belief that chemicals in juices are turning kids gay.

h/t: Right Wing Watch

AARP strives to serve the interests of all people over the age of 50, and that includes members of the LGBT community. The organization has a webpage dedicated to AARP Pride, with resources related to issues like marriage equality’s legal benefits, nondiscrimination protections in nursing homes, and unique health concerns like HIV. Because of AARP’s inclusiveness, the American Family Association is specifically targeting the retirement group for contributing money to the “homosexual agenda.” AFA Executive Vice President Buddy Smith offered this warning:

SMITH: When you reach the age of a person like myself and you begin to get information from the AARP saying that they will represent you and your values and standards, you’d better be careful. This group is a very, very powerful Washington lobby, and you just may be very surprised and disappointed to see those things that they are promoting and those things they are opposing.

Be very careful that you know what your fees are going for because the AARP is not on your side. If you are a Christian and believe in Biblical values, you can pretty much count on the fact that everything that you are in favor of, the AARP is opposing.

LGBT older adults face many unique challenges, especially in regards to their very economic well-being. Because of discrimination and alienation throughout their lifetime, as well as their inability to claim partner benefits like Social Security, LGBT older adults are much more likely to be living in isolation and poverty.

H/T: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

In many of the states that have waged marriage equality fights recently, opponents have often coalesced around a coalition consisting of the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), the state’s Catholic conference, and the state’s “family policy council” affiliate of the Family Research Council. In Illinois, however, these typical players have not united in the same way, seemingly in part because the state social conservative group is the Illinois Family Institute (IFI), a hate group in its own right associated with the American Family Association.

IFI’s rhetoric is quite a bit more brazen than what anti-gay groups have used in other states, which may have scared away its would-be allies. 

Today marks three months since the Illinois Senate passed the marriage equality bill, and with only three weeks left for the House to pass it, here’s a look at some of IFI’s rhetoric that is dominating the opposition:

• Today, IFI posted numerous photos from its rally this weekend, including a sign that reads, “The crime against nature will never be equal.”
• Speakers at the rally included ex-gay advocate Linda Jernigan and another hate group leader, Peter LaBarbera, who told the crowd that homosexuality is “unnatural and wrong,” citing HIV rates among men who have sex with men as evidence of “the dangers of homosexuality.”
• In February, IFI’s Laurie Higgins wrote that gay people shouldn’t even be allowed to teach because they’ll put pictures of their partners on their desk that students will see.
• In fact, IFI believes that parents should pull their children from any classroom that attempts to create a safe environment for LGBT students.
• IFI has claimed gays and lesbians already have equality because they can marry the opposite sex like everyone else; same-sex marriage is thus a demand “to be treated specially.”

This extreme rhetoric extends beyond the talking points conservatives have traditionally used in these fights, which tend to focus on supposed protections for children, gender norms, and the institution of marriage. By openly condemning homosexuality as unnatural and curable through therapy — as well as enabling the bullying of LGBT youth — IFI sets itself apart.

H/T: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

History has been made in Brazil today, as the National Council of Justice (Portuguese: Conselho Nacional de Justiça) has voted 14-1 to support a resolution stipulating that same-sex couples should be able to receive marriage licenses throughout the entire country. In 2011, the Brazilian Supreme Court had ruled that it was unconstitutional to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, but up to this point, local jurisdictions could decide whether to offer the freedom to marry — 12 states and the federal district had already started doing so.

Pending the implementation of this ruling, Brazil will become the 15th country to offer nationwide marriage equality, joining Uruguay and France, who passed laws just last month.

h/t: Zack Ford at Think Progress LGBT

Linda Harvey of Mission America is worried that “homosexual news blogs” and other websites “that are sympathetic to the social and political goals of the homosexual movement” may actually trick young people, who could simply be visiting such sites in order to research the debate on same-sex marriage, into becoming gay by putting them in close reach of “homosexual-themed pornography.”

“Schools, Hollywood and even the top leaders in our country are all busy selling homosexuality to kids,” Harvey warned, adding that pornography and other “deceptive influences” are also “convincing [kids] to believe they are gay.”

h/t: RWW

The former British colony of Belize is now in the news, as Belizean LGBTQ activist Caleb Orozco is attempting to overturn the country’s ban on sodomy.

Zach Beauchamp at Think Progress LGBT:

Caleb Orozco is an openly gay man in a country that criminalizes his existence. Belizean law says that “every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years;” the statute defines sex between between consenting same-sex adults as being one such unnatural act. Orozco and his organization (the United Belize Advocacy Movement) succeeding in pushing a legal case against the ban on same-sex activity to the nation’s highest court on Wednesday.

While neighboring Mexico has constitutionally mandated marriage equality, the LGBT communities in Belize’s other neighbors — Honduras and Guatemala — have been frequent targets of anti-gay discrimination and violence. But even those two countries don’t ban same-sex sexual activity.

The Guardian:

Caleb Orozco has been denounced as the antichrist, received death threats and had a beer bottle smashed into his face. Next Tuesday, the gay rights campaigner will face a very different kind of challenge, when he comes up against the attorney general of Belize and the leaders of the country’s churches.

Belize’s churches have been at the forefront of those condemning the legal challenge. The most outspoken opponent is Pastor Scott Stirm, a Texas evangelical missionary who runs Belize Action; he has praised the existing legislation as “a good law that protects human dignity” on the grounds that it is often used in sex abuse cases.

Section 53 declares that “every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years”. Like so many laws around the world criminalising homosexuality, Section 53 is a legacy of imperial rule from London. Buggery with consent and bestiality were deemed merely to be “public nuisances” when the criminal code of Belize came into force in 1888. The offence was re-categorised as an “unnatural crime” during the second world war.

Hopefully, common sense should prevail in Belize… with its anti-sodomy laws going in the trashcan.

(cross-posted from Daily Kos)

With Minnesota looking poised to enact marriage equality early next week, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn (D) is getting restless. In remarks Thursday, he called for the Illinois House of Representatives to follow the state Senate’s lead and enact marriage equality.

Quinn, who endorsed same-sex marriage last May, has been personally lobbying undecided legislators and says supporters are close to the required 60 votes.

After months of delays, Quinn says it is now “time to vote.” He told reporters “it’s important that Illinois and the House of Representatives get moving… I believe a majority exists to get this bill passed through the House onto my desk so I can sign it into law.”

Recent polling showed 50 percent of Illinois voters in support of marriage equality, compared with just 29 percent in opposition. In addition to Quinn, both of the state’s U.S. Senators — Democrat Dick Durbin and Republican Mark Kirk — have endorsed equal marriage.

A source told the Chicago Phoenix that the bill currently has 58 of the necessary 60 votes for passage. The legislative session ends on May 31.

We’re getting there!

H/T: Josh Israel at Think Progress LGBT