Gay marriage “statement” to be made (maybe) this weekend in SW suburbs

It will be intriguing to see how intense the ideological rhetoric will be Saturday when the state’s Republican Party is supposed to meet to consider whether to dump party Chairman Pat Brady.

BRADY: Fate on the line?

For there are those of a certain conservative bent who are disgusted not only with the fact that they are being pressured into consider a measure to make marriage amongst gay couples legitimate, but that their own party chairman isn’t backing them.

THESE ARE THE same people who liked it when, nearly two decades ago, the Illinois General Assembly and then-Gov. Jim Edgar made their own statement to change state laws to clarify that marriage in Illinois could never be legal between same-gender couples.

Now that such a thought is blatantly offensive (although honestly, it was just as tacky in 1996), they want to complain.

The party delegates are scheduled to meet Saturday at the convention center in southwest suburban Tinley Park located just off Interstate 80 – which makes it fairly easy for all to get to.

Although I’m wondering how many people who are party delegates are going to be reluctant enough to want to get involved in this issue that they will decide to skip this session.

I’M SURE SOME delegates will show up and will get all vehement in their talk. They are the hard-core who are prepared to go on a crusade for their “cause” – which has less to do with the sanctity of the family and our society and more about their “need” to demonize anyone who isn’t exactly like themselves.

I can’t help but notice that the person who seems to be at the forefront of leading this effort to dump Pat Brady is none other than James Oberweis – whose family business may make high-quality dairy products (the ice cream in particular is outstanding) but has become something of a political joke.

OBERWEIS: Trying to "make" his bones?

He finally got elected last year to a seat in the Illinois state Senate, and is amongst the rank-and-file of the legislators now in Springfield. But considering this was a man with aspirations to run for the U.S. Senate or Illinois governor, being nothing more than a freshman senator from Sugar Grove (out near Aurora) must be demeaning to his ego.

He probably envisions that deposing Brady will make him a party leader – or at least leader of the conservative ideologue faction that is probably the only group of people he wants to have to pay any attention to.

WHICH IS WHY I think that people of sense ought to just skip the event! Particularly since I noticed the Capitol Fax newsletter is reporting that it is very possible that no binding vote could be taken on Saturday -- so it wouldn't matter what happens.

Let them leave Oberweis with a movement that goes nowhere due to a lack of a quorum. Or with so few people on hand that it becomes blatantly clear how limited the opposition to the whole gay marriage issue has become.

If anything, it would go a long way toward showing that Brady wasn’t wrong when he said the Republican opposition on this issue puts Illinois GOPers on the “wrong side of history.”

Just that certain people don’t want to accept it – making them as pathetic as those people who in the late 1970s and early 1980s were still ranting and raging about segregation and the fact that it was no longer written into the law!

ALTHOUGH I’M ALSO aware that there are many people who are going to disagree with Illinois Comptroller Judy Baar Topinka – who this week offered her praise for Brady and went so far as to say that gay marriage is actually a conservative concept. No wonder why some GOPers think of her as the "crazy aunt" whom they try to hide in their figurative closet!

TOPINKA: What will she say next?

After all, these couples want to be married and in monogamous relationships just like any other heterosexual couple, is what Topinka says.

True enough, but I suspect many more agree with a person who wrote a recent letter to the editor of the Chicago Tribune – claiming that bans on gay marriage are NOT discrimination because gay people are permitted to marry anyone of the other gender whom they might wish?!?

Maybe, just maybe, those members of the Illinois House who are wavering on the issue will see the Republican event this weekend and finally realize how isolated they’re going to make themselves if they don’t get with the program on this particular issue.

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