Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Marriage Equality Bill Will Be Signed Today on Desk That Belonged to Lincoln

Today will be the day that Illinois becomes the 16th state to legalize gay marriage, Governor Pat Quinn will be signing the bill into law at 3:30 pm central time today at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

What I thought was a really nice touch was the fact that it's going to be signed into law on a desk brought in from Springfield that once belonged to Abraham Lincoln

Here in Illinois, regardless of one's political views, Lincoln is very much a revered figure, perhaps because we consider him a "native son", he spent most of his childhood, and all of his adult life until he was elected president in Illinois. He's even on our licence plates:

Example plate, image taken from Secretary of State website

I'm sure though many Illinois liberals and moderates will think this is rather appropriate, I'm sure conservatives, especially the Illinois Family Institute , one of the most vocal, and disgusting pro-homophobia groups in the country will howl about this, feeling that it's a desecration of Lincoln's name and memory. It's perfect.

Well played, Governor Quinn, well played......

My only complaint is that it will take until June 1st, 2014 for the law to go into effect, until then, our inadequate "civil unions" law is still effect. This is typical for Illinois law, though, most laws go into effect either on January 1st, or June 1st.

2 comments:

  1. It may take long to implement, at least its a very public and positive step in the right direction. Be proud as a state.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't know why it's going to take this long to put it into effect, unless they're just going by the Illinois tradition of letting laws go into effect either on January 1st or June 1st.

      It shouldn't take that long to prepare to give out licenses, maybe in Chicago and it's immediate suburbs, there will be a flood of applicants, but not in the rest of the state, it will probably be only slightly high numbers elsewhere.

      Delete

No spam, proselytizing, or personal attacks, such comments will never see the light of day around here.

Disagreeing with me is fine (I encourage it), but have some decency when writing your comment