Anyway I just got this letter back from Rep. Tom Morrison,
Well I thanked him for emailing me back but I think it is obvious (to me) that he didn't really read my letter.
While I don't want to come off as smug on this, I do think that Marriage Equality in Illinois is only a matter of time. If not now, then in a few years. Certainly a generation. While I am sure that Rep. Morrison believe he has the best of intentions he is letting his religious belief get in the way of his civic duty. He is putting his on comfort over the rights of others. One day we will look back on these days the same way we look back on the South in the 1960s with civil rights.
I still say email your representatives in Illinois. You can find them here.
Let them know how you feel.
This is another case of religion denying another group of people their human rights.
Now while I will grant Rep. Morrison the benefit of the doubt in terms of whether his vote against human rights is hate-motivated, the Illinois Family Institute gets no such pass from me. They keep referring to this bill as the "faux marriage" bill or the "counterfeit marriage" bill. There is nothing but hate on their site. They are even designated a Hate Group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
I say please use their own "Take Action" center to email your reps to let them know that your support this bill and you do not support the IFI.
I think it is only a matter of time. I live in Iowa, and we've had marriage equality since 2009. The sky still hasn't fallen here, though we still have politicians fighting to put a marriage ban in place. Luckily those numbers of people who oppose equality seem to be dwindling, though they still yell as loud as ever.
ReplyDeleteI hope so. My brother lives in Iowa and is getting married to his boyfriend soon.
DeleteI have been married to the same woman now for 18 years. This doesn't change my life at all, save that I live in a state where some people are treated as second-class citizens (or worse).
Please keep in mind that it is not "religion" that is causing those bigoted attitudes (for instance, here in my own State of Washington religious groups were instrumental in the process of approving same-sex marriage), but rather the tortured interpretations of religion that some people use to justify their pre-existing bigotry after the fact. There are self-described atheists I have met who use "evolutionary psychology" for the same purpose of justifying pre-existing bigotry, so it's not just a problem of "religion".
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