Are we really at a point where we don’t care if Lightfoot is lesbian? Fat chance!

A recent discussion I overheard – it doesn’t matter that mayoral hopeful Lori Lightfoot is a lesbian who actually is married to another woman.

LIGHTFOOT: Is her marriage an issue?

Because we in Chicago are supposedly so sophisticated that no one would openly admit to voting against her because of sexual orientation. It won’t be an issue. Particularly since the kind of people determined to dump Toni Preckwinkle from office can rant about that pop tax she touted while leading Cook County government.

I’LL HAVE TO admit I was kind of hoping there’d be a touch of truth to such thoughts. I would have liked it if I could have made it through the month of the election run-off without having to get into anyone’s marital status.

But that didn’t happen. The issue has sprung up. And the part that bothers me – it seems that it’s Lightfoot herself who seems determined to make an issue of it.

Or maybe she just seems determined to think of herself as the victimized one and wants to be able to claim she’s the one being picked upon. Which makes me wonder how a “Mayor Lightfoot” is going to handle herself against all the interests who will not be inclined to support her on oh so many issues.

But seriously, this election cycle took an ugly turn that would have been so nice if we could have avoided it.

THE ISSUE CAME up when the two candidates faced off in debate last week, and the question was put forth for the two candidates being asked to say something nice about their opponent – as in what did they most respect about their challenger.

That led Preckwinkle to offer up some public praise about the way Lightfoot is public about her sexual orientation.

Or as she put it, “that (Lightfoot is) open and honest about her LGBTQ orientation. You know, I think it’s really important in this country that we be respectful of differences and that we understand that all of us matter and that there is dignity in each and every one of us. And there has been so much discrimination and prejudice and homophobia in our country, it’s very important that particularly prominent people declare their sexual orientation and do it with pride.”

PRECKWINKLE: Sympathetic? Or cruel?

She insists her praise was sincere.

YET LIGHTFOOT LET it be known she took offense. As in she thinks the sole purpose of Preckwinkle saying anything at all was to put a reminder in the minds of voters that “Lori’s gay.”

Which might create just enough doubt in the minds of people with a homophobic streak to let it become an issue in the way they cast their ballot for mayor come April 2.

What’s sort of interesting is that just over a week ago, there were gay rights activists who were saying this was a unique election cycle because Preckwinkle has a record as a government official of being supportive of gay rights issues and causes.

Could it be that Lightfoot absolutely feels the need to have people vote for her because of her orientation? And that Preckwinkle has to be demonized in order to fit her niche in Lightfoot’s world?

OR DID LIGHTFOOT have a point in trying to get the support of those voters, particularly those of African-American descent whose religious attitudes make them hostile to the very concept of homosexuality, whom Lightfoot is counting on Willie Wilson’s endorsement to win over?

WILSON: Will his endorsement make a difference?

Anything’s possible. In fact, I’m inclined to believe there’s an element of truth in what both of them are spewing these days.

It would have been so nice if we could have made it through this election cycle without making an issue of this issue. What if we could seriously consider the qualifications of the individual candidates without getting into the personal nonsense?

Then again, that’s probably an attitude we’ll have to wait a few more decades to achieve. As in the day will come when we realize just how ridiculous we all truly are!

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EDITOR’S NOTE: For those who care, Lightfoot is married to Amy Eshleman, and they live together with a 10-year-old daughter. Preckwinkle was married to Zeus Preckwinkle for 44 years, until their divorce in 2013. They have two grown children.

Did the Pope bless Kim Davis’ beliefs? About as much as Mark McGwire bat!

Talk about some serious media mismanagement; how else to explain the fact that the Vatican is feeling compelled to come up with clarification after clarification about the “meeting” the Pope supposedly had with that county clerk from Kentucky who wants to be the heroine of the homophobic community.

Did it really happen?

For it seems that back when Pope Francis was in the United States last week, Kim Davis was one of a dozen people who were taken to the Vatican’s embassy in Washington.

SHE GOT A brief bit of face time, where Davis insists she was told by His Holiness himself that he told her to “stay strong” in her ongoing fight against people who expect her to fulfill her legal duties as clerk of Rowan County, Ky., by signing off on all marriage licenses.

Even those issued by gay couples wishing to have legal legitimacy added to their personal relationships.

Most of what has been spoken about this “meeting” has come from Davis. The woman who isn’t even Catholic (she’s part of an Apostolic faith) wants us to think she has the backing of one of the world’s leading religious faiths.

The Vatican, which likes to think it is above all these worldly considerations, initially came up with a “we can neither confirm nor deny” strategy in response to Davis and her followers’ antics.

IT LATER BECAME a “we confirm they met, but will not elaborate” type of response.
 

No longer the highlight of the papal visit

But even that was not enough to put to rest this issue. By Friday, a Vatican spokesman had to issue yet another clarification – providing scant details about an issue upon which the church usually thinks are no one else’s concern.

“The pope did not enter into the details of the situation of Mrs. Davis, and his meeting with her should not be considered a form of support of her position in all of its particular and complex aspects,” we were told. Then, we learned how the pope also greeted a gay couple and their friends during his tour -- the same amount of attention that Davis got.

Not that I expect this to put the issue to rest – there are those who are going to keep this issue alive for as long as possible. It may well be that it was people within the Catholic church hierarchy who arranged for Davis to even be on hand to see the Pope in Washington – perhaps those who want to push the church toward the ideologue side with regards to the gay marriage debate.

JUST BECAUSE THE courts may have ruled a certain way doesn’t mean there won’t be those wishing to overturn them. Abortion was decided by the courts to be a legitimate medical procedure more than four decades ago – yet the issue isn’t anywhere near going away.



A comparable moment to Kim Davis?

Now I’m not about to claim Davis is flat-out lying when she talks about her papal moment. Only that I realize being allowed into the pope’s presence shouldn’t be thought of as being a bigger deal than it really is.

I still remember in 1999 when Pope John Paul II came to St. Louis. One of the people he met with was then-St. Louis Cardinals slugger Mark McGwire. They shook hands, and McGwire got to introduce his son, Matt, to the pope.

The whole incident lasted a few seconds before the pope moved on. Aside from creating the opportunity for some jokes about the pope meeting with a cardinal, it was just a brief tidbit.

YET IN A papal journey to the Americas that ventured into Havana and saw Pope Francis speak both at Madison Square Garden AND before Congress, there’s a very good chance that this trip will have as its lingering memory the few seconds that Davis worked her way to the front of the line and had papal face time. Then again, the pope’s visit also got upstaged by the death of one-time New York Yankees great Yogi Berra, so maybe the pope was going to struggle for top-billing.

His death put Pope on Pg. 14 of NY Post

By that definition of papal attention, perhaps I should consider my own ’99 moment – I was a United Press International reporter back then and I was in St. Louis for the John Paul II trip. At one point, I was watching a motorcade through the city and the pope was about 50 feet away from me when he looked in my direction and waved.

For his later mass at the now-former TWA Dome, I was relegated to another room and had to watch him speak via a video screen connection. Admittedly, Davis’ proximity to a Pope was better than I had.

But somehow, I think her experience was closer to mine than to a true papal audience – which is the impression some conservative ideologues seem to want to create. Which strikes me as a repulsive use of religion for one’s own beliefs!

  -30-

Some people just determined to live in the past (and make us live there too)

I can’t say I was surprised to learn recently that a state legislator is talking about wanting to bring back the death penalty to Illinois.

HAINE: Wants to bring back death penalty

There hadn’t been an execution in this state since 1999, and then-Gov. George Ryan cleared out the state’s ‘death row’ just before leaving office early in 2003. Then, the Legislature and then-Gov. Pat Quinn did away with the capital crimes statute in 2011.

WHICH MEANS THE worst of the criminal element in Illinois get locked away in prison for life, without the option of parole. To anyone with sense, that sounds pretty bad. You can’t get more severe than letting someone know they’re going to grow old and die in a place that no one with sense ever wants to be in.

But there are always those people like Bill Haine, a state senator from Alton (near St. Louis), who last week said he plans to sponsor a bill to bring back the death penalty.

He’s falling into a line of logic that really doesn’t make much sense – some crimes are so high-profile that people are entitled to know someone will die for them.

He brought up the recent cop killing in suburban Fox Lake (which has been getting significant news coverage largely because it’s coming at a time when there’s little else happening – a “slow news day,” so to speak) as such evidence. He probably will get someone with a vengeance streak strong enough to want an execution.

NOT THAT IT would really mean anything. Chances are that anyone with a personal stake would be so offended that even an execution wouldn’t appease them.

My own death penalty stance actually got solidified on that spring night in 1994 when John Gacy was put to death at the Stateville Correctional Center. I was a reporter-type person that night, and got to see the many people who felt compelled to see blood. I was particularly peeved at the batch who felt the need to taunt a pair of nuns and a priest who were among the few who felt any compassion for human life in general.

So excuse me for not being sympathetic to those people who can’t handle the thought that the idea of homicide in the name of ‘justice’ just doesn’t make any sense.

It will be a dark day at Statehouse if death penalty actually returns

Then again, there will always be those people who want to think that the trends of society moving forward is a mistake.

JUST LIKE THOSE individuals like that clerk in rural Kentucky who did a few days in a county jail, and thinks she’s now a victim who suffered for Christianity – all because she can’t handle the idea that marriage for gay couples has the support of the law.

The people who have that hang-up are likely to focus their efforts on trying to figure out how to thwart the concept as much as possible. In their minds, they’re probably looking to all the anti-abortion activists who throughout the years have been able to push for so many restrictions that there are large swaths of the United States where it becomes next to impossible to actually obtain an abortion.

They’d probably like to have only certain places where gay couples could get married – then they’ll try to restrict the ability of their local residents to even think of going to those places.

All issues where a 19^th Century mentality is what is being sought by the ideologues of our society.

WHICH IS WHERE the death penalty becomes yet another issue where some people want to live in the past.

It’s another issue where the trend is to ditch the idea (although Wisconsin has not had a capital crimes statute for most of its existence, and it is surviving very well). Some 20 states have done away with the death penalty, some since Illinois.

Does anyone think Dahmer got off lightly?

Wisconsin, of course, was the state that gave us Jeffrey Dahmer some two decades ago. He of the cannibalistic streak whose own lengthy prison sentence came to an abrupt end when another inmate decided to kill him for who knows why!

Somehow, I don’t think that a similar fate for whoever winds up being arrested for the slaying of Fox Lake police Lt. Joseph Gliniewicz would be out-of-line.

  -30-

Grand Old Party: From Party of Lincoln to Party of Crackpots – how truly sad

I used to think that the one-time Party of Lincoln was more interested in wishing it could be the Party of Reagan.

TRUMP: Did anybody watch his pageant?

Although I’m now wondering if the Republican Party has its desires to become the Party of Extremists who can only “fit into” society by marginalizing all the normal people.

HOW ELSE TO explain the fact that real estate mogul Donald Trump has polls showing his presidential fantasies being taken seriously by those people inclined to cast ballots in Republican primaries.

Or the fact that presidential dreamer Rick Santorum (a former senator from Pennsylvania) is taking up his own issue – gay marriage. He wants it written into the Constitution that gay couples have no business thinking of marriage as something that applies to them.

He’s sure there are enough people still peeved about the Supreme Court of the United States striking down efforts by the states to ban gay marriage that they will unite behind his would-be presidential campaign.

Of course, it would mean that everybody in society not interested in voting in the Republican primary would be united against him. But what does he care; the basic principle of ideologues is that everybody who doesn’t think like themselves is irrelevant and to be disregarded.

THAT’S DEFINITELY THE strategy of Trump, who got the people worked up with his nonsense talk of Mexico (he wants the nativist and xenophobe vote) and now is claiming he’s owed an apology by his detractors – on account of the fact that the drug boss who was imprisoned in Mexico managed to escape.

Does he think those two morons who escaped from an upstate New York prison last month somehow allow him to score political points against some other group? Or is it just as irrelevant a point as anything related to Joaquin Guzman.

SANTORUM: Looking for his political niche

Or is all of this just more cheap political rhetoric of the sort that IS the inherent problem with our political system these days?

Although I don’t take Trump’s poll lead at all seriously.

FOR ONE THING, it is early in the process. There also are so many candidates in that Republican primary.

Which is why a 15 percent support total (which is all Trump can claim) is enough for him to be “the leader” at this point in time. It’s also possible that those people in the 15 percent are the only ones who will ever support the idea of a president who probably thinks he can remodel the White House and rename it “Trump Mansion.”

 

GUZMAN: Nobody owes Trump an apology

They’re also probably the people who actually bothered to watch the Miss USA pageant Sunday night; living in their own world and pretending that Trump didn’t say anything out of the ordinary.

As though the fact that the pageant wasn’t on a national network and had to settle for being viewed on an obscure cable TV channel wasn’t evidence enough – some people are just way too eager to live in their own world and think the rest of us have to live there subordinate to them.

NOT THAT THE GOP is alone in playing its political games with these issues. My e-mail inbox has been getting flooded with its share of messages such as, “Trump’s ridiculous, offensive ideas (and the Republicans who agree with them”).

The real point of those messages is to encourage us to donate money to the Democratic National Committee, or other allied groups, to bolster their own election efforts. After all, what good is a “President Clinton” or whomever if they run into a Congress determined to vote “no” on anything they desire?



CLINTON: The beneficiary?

Such as the kind of people who fall into the “15 percent” and would be inclined to sympathize with Trump’s business interests over the concerns of the people.

Which may be what Trump really hopes to achieve by running for office – being able to tell the president what he should do is better than having to hold the office and deal with all its inherent stresses and frustrations.

  -30-

Time passes, but ideologues use same nonsense to try to justify themselves

It is a line of logic I have heard so often from so many different conservative ideologue pundits that I don’t know who deserves credit (or blame, if you prefer).

A colossal mistake?

It is the theory that the whole Civil Rights movement and the passage in 1964 of the Civil Rights Act was a mistake because it antagonized the “right” into being so opposed to the idea of equality for all regardless of race.

I HAVE HEARD it said that the Second World War was a major change on our society that forced people of different races together. It would have caused a gradual change that eventually would have brought about some form of integration.

Letting black people agitate and political people use the rule of law to thwart those people who insist the “American Way” of life is a segregated one caused distrust and hate. Black people harmed their own interest, and brought upon themselves all the ill will some continue to feel upon them.

Which is a load of nonsense!!! This was a case where someone was going to have to force upon the ideologues the sense of equality that our nation theoretically is based upon.

So excuse me for thinking that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and other ideologues are full of it when they suggest that gay activists screwed themselves over by pushing for gay marriage and having the high court implement it with their 5-4 ruling last week.

IT’S LITERALLY THE same line that society was gradually headed in their direction, and how people would have become accepting enough that we eventually would have had Legislatures in all 50 states enact something to wipe out their old laws that prevented marriage from being valid for gay couples.

Now relegated to the 'junk' drawer?

“Stealing this issue from the people will for many cast a cloud over same-sex marriage, making a dramatic social change that much more difficult to accept,” Roberts wrote in his legal dissent to the high court’s ruling.

While Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote of how the desire by gay couples to marry shows just how much they respect the institution that they want to be included, Roberts insisted for the record that equality is not a Constitutional issue.

There also was Justice Clarence Thomas, who argued that people cannot be demeaned by the actions in opposition to their desire for gay marriage. Then again, he also argued that the Negro slaves of old “did not lose their dignity because the government allowed them to be enslaved.”

Put sign next to Klan robe at Smithsonian

OF COURSE, IT means the government loses any dignity and respect it might want to claim for itself by permitting such things.

As for the people who want to complain that five justices imposed their will on the masses, that is nonsense. Because the whole point of the balance of powers between the branches of government is that it is the courts that resolve disputes and intervene when the legislative and executive branches act improperly.

Which is what one can say was the situation where some states, including our own Illinois, willingly implemented gay marriage, while others such as Indiana had to have it forced on them by lower courts and a few states where the Confederate battle flag prevails despite its repulsion by the masses were determined to be the holdouts – fighting the issue to the very death.

There are those people who were never going to be swayed on this issue – and were eager to use their powers of intimidation to ensure that political people of a cowardly nature would never take a firm stance on the issue, one way or another.

SO IT ONLY became natural that the Supreme Court would have to intervene. It can be argued that had the court taken the approach its minority suggests, it would have been neglecting its duty.

Will we get 'gay marriage' coin in 2065?

On Sunday, we got to see a wilder-than-usual celebration at the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago. The annual event’s timing just two days after the high court’s ruling made it an occasion for the act’s backers to let their joy out in public. I don’t doubt the parade images will offend certain people who will never get over what the court did.

Then again, isn’t the fact that this issue is now resolved legally so we can start the process of moving forward the ultimate benefit.

Or do you really think we’d be better off on racial issues if the civil rights movement of a half-century ago hadn’t happened and we still had pockets of the country using “state’s rights” rhetoric to justify segregation?

  -30-

What happens now that sanity has prevailed over Supreme Ct., society?

Back in the days a half-century ago, you knew you were passing through “nut country” when you started seeing the billboards reading “Impeach Earl Warren.”

Would you have wanted to receive this postcard in the mail?

Referring to the one-time chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who presided back in the days when many of the significant civil rights decisions were made.

IT WAS THE opinion of certain people in our society that the court should have been enforcing “the law” by striking all these actions down. Instead, the Warren-era court helped advance us out of the days when segregation was considered an “all-American” value of our society.

Those people are largely dead. By and large, it’s their grandchildren who are now the overly-vocal ideologues who are trying to perpetuate a certain vision of what the United States should be about.

And their vision took two highly-visible blows from the Supreme Court this week – the high court issued a final ruling that upholds the attempts by President Barack Obama to impose health insurance for all and strikes down a lower court ruling that tried to keep laws in place against gay couple from being legitimately married.

The end result is that gay couples can now not be denied a marriage license in places like Alabama and Mississippi. And the political people who will continue to strike down the Affordable Care Act that provides for subsidies to help people in need afford health insurance will have to admit it’s their own personal ideological hang-ups at work – and not any legitimate flaw in the law.

HOW LONG UNTIL we start getting the “Impeach John Roberts” billboards popping up in crackpot land?

ROBERTS: Will ideologues blame him?

Roberts is the Supreme Court justice appointed by a Republican president who was supposed to keep the high court’s rulings in tune with conservative ideologue desires, but wound up siding with health care reform because he saw how ideologically-motivated its opponents were.

To someone who is concerned about the letter of the law above all else, it makes sense to be scared off by ideology.

As far as gay marriage is concerned, Roberts was among the justices opposed to the idea. Although he wasn’t able to persuade a majority of the court to back him. To the ideologues, what good is being “chief justice” if you can’t strong-arm your colleagues into doing what you want?

SO THEY’RE BOUND to despise him. Even though the bulk of the country will wind up supporting him.

KENNEDY: 'Equal dignity'

Because both of these issues are ones of great importance to our society.

The lack of health insurance by people is a problem that hurts us all because the fact that the United States offers access to the best health care in the world doesn’t matter much if one can’t afford it. If those people wind up relying on emergency rooms for their health care, then being unable to pay the bill, the public will wind up paying.

As for gay marriage, I honestly feel it’s none of my business who someone else wants to marry. I don’t think it is anybody’s business what a couple does. Until the day comes when a man is forcibly married to another man (or woman to woman) against their will, this isn’t an issue for the law to be concerned with.

THE COURT WOUND up siding the way they did, despite the outspoken criticism of justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia – the latter of whom was once a professor of the same University of Chicago Law School that Obama was once an instructor at.

Scalia was particularly snotty in his written diatribe against the gay marriage ruling, saying the line of logic used to defend marriage, intimacy and spirituality as Constitutionally-protected rights is at about the level of “a fortune cookie.”

As opposed to Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the opinion that supported gay marriage, saying the fact that gay couples wanted to be able to marry was actually the utmost respect for the concept that they wanted to share in.

“Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions,” Kennedy wrote. “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

SCALIA: Will ideology die with him?

WHAT I SUSPECT truly bothers Scalia and his ilk is the notion that they were appointed by ideologically-motivated presidents whose intent was to create a conservative tilt to the high court that would long outlive them. Perhaps Scalia thought his ideological leanings would outlive him and become a permanent part of our society.

Instead, it seems the court would rather follow the law than his ideology that won’t even outlast his term on the Supreme Court, and he and his followers will be the ones “condemned to live in loneliness” that they ultimately imposed on themselves.

  -30-

Gay marriage ‘brawl’ is on, but will it merely provoke a 2nd high court case?

The oral arguments by lawyers in the Supreme Court case related to whether gay marriage will become a legitimate concept across the United States took place Tuesday, with many legal experts expecting a ruling some time in June.

Yet this is going to be an issue that will remain with us for some time, and I found it amusing to read a Washington Post account of how this could merely trigger another legal battle that will have to be resolved by the nation’s high court.

MANY ACTIVIST TYPES whom I have encountered seem to be going on the belief that gay marriage’s time has arrived. A majority of the court will wind up deciding that this is not an issue that should be settled state-by-state.

There ought to be a single national policy, and the idea of a patchwork network with some states going absolutely out of their way to say “No!!!” to the idea of gay couples being married just isn’t workable.

However, I also know from experience that anybody who tries to predict what a court will do is a fool. This is a court with conservative leanings, and I noticed the Post reporting that Justice Antonin Scalia said during Tuesday’s questioning that he is reluctant to support anything that would be “unpalatable” to religious-motivated people. I doubt he's alone.

There may well be people who will “go down with the ship,” so to speak, on the issue of preventing gay couples from being able to wed (and get all the legal benefits that heterosexual married couples receive).

IF WE GET a patchwork of laws on this issue, it would seem that Illinois would remain a sympathetic place. Illinois may have been far from the first Midwestern state to take on the issue, but it ultimately had a Legislature and governor sign changes into law.

That may well wind up being the biggest part of former Gov. Pat Quinn’s legacy – although I’m sure there also are those individuals in Illinois who would want to demonize him for that very fact.

But those states who wound up having gay marriage imposed on them by courts striking down their laws against it (which Illinois used to have, the two mid-1990s years of Republican domination of state government included passage of a law prohibiting marriage for gay couples) may wind up engaging in a mad dash to see how quickly they could reinstate such conditions.

That could well include Indiana, where certain political people are peeved that their laws were taken down and that their attempt to make a symbolic gesture to the conservative ideologues (in the form of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act) drew so much hostile attention that they had to back off.

STATE LINE ROAD could well become a barrier for certain people – a place where they will have to make sure they don’t venture too far east for fear of getting caught on the “wrong” side of the Chicago area after dark. Although some Hoosier municipalities are trying to sway their Legislature to the “proper” side of this issue.

As for those couples who already have married, would they find themselves invalidated. The Post reported that it could well turn into another legal battle as to whether those marriages would be undone, or if we’d have certain gay couples who got married on a technicality and others who can’t because of timing.

It seems like the easiest thing to do would be to just accept the reality of our society these days. It’s here, and going nowhere – except perhaps in the minds of the ideologues who think everybody else ought to live in their world in a subservient position.

Although I suspect that regardless of how the high court ultimately rules, it won’t change the sentiments of some people with regards to marriage.

THEY’LL BE THE ones who will grimace every time they see a gay couple together – probably the same way they are bothered by the sight of an inter-racial couple.

The essence of human nature won’t change.

But what can change, and what should change, is the idea that those individuals’ hang-ups ought to have the protection of the letter of the law.

That is what our Supreme Court will have to resolve in coming weeks.

  -30-

Hoosiers determined to go down w/ sinking ship of opposing gay marriage?

When it comes to the concept of gay marriage being legal, we in Illinois had it implemented into our law by the General Assembly and a governor. While in neighboring Indiana, it was the federal courts that wound up striking down the Hoosier laws that made such marriages illegitimate.

So in learning Thursday that Indiana Gov. Mike Pence went ahead (like he had said he would) and signed into law a “religious objections” bill, all I can figure is that some people are determined to be the last holdouts to accepting the reality that such marriages are here to stay.

THEY’RE PROBABLY THE ones who secretly are praying that conservative ideologue Supreme Court justices such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas can convince a slim majority of the nine-member high court to rule later this year that all these federal appeals courts (including the seventh circuit here in Chicago) were wrong to rule in ways that legitimized gay marriage.

Personally, I think the new Indiana law – and the bills being considered in about a dozen other states – is a whole lot of nothing.

Its intent is to say that Indiana people and business interests can’t be forced into doing something that would violate their own religious beliefs.

As in those clergy members who might be asked to perform a wedding ceremony for a gay couple, or all those businesses that cater to weddings for their livelihood now being able to say they don’t want to deal with gay couples.

IN CERTAIN RURAL parts of Indiana, that might well make it impossible for a couple to be married locally if there aren’t a lot of alternatives readily available.

But the Illinois laws that former Gov. Pat Quinn gave approval to included clauses that exempted religious organizations from being forced into performing such marriage ceremonies.

In fact, the bulk of gay activists I have spoken to about this issue have conceded that many such couples would be more likely to seek a civil service and a trip to a friendly judge when seeking to be married. There really isn’t a problem.

As for the others, I can’t help but think they will be the ones who suffer by refusing to accept such wedding business. It’s their loss of income, and if they get branded as some sort of ideological nutcase who tries to spread his (or her) view onto others, it will be them who ultimately go out of business.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE to wonder about a florist who thinks it offends his sense of self to be involved in a gay wedding. Does he think that standing up against certain marriage somehow makes his (or her) line of work appear less effeminate? Or are they merely covering up their own leanings on the issue?

It’s nonsensical, and I can’t help but think that those people living east of Indianapolis Boulevard (the part of Indiana west of that street really does feel like an extension of the Chicago area) are envisioning problems that simply don’t exist – all because they want to be on the record as opposing what is happening with regards to marriage!

A view that isn’t shared by many. Reading the local press makes it seem like a lot of businesses are opposed to this change – and, in fact, are making sure potential customers know of.

As though they think making their services or goods available to all is the ultimate way to make a profit in business.

OF COURSE, THE supporters of “religious objections” are probably ranting right now about how “liberal media!?!” (their favorite target) is distorting their idea of truth by paying attention to the elements they’d rather discriminate against!

It further reinforces the notion that the ultimate losers in this Hoosier way of thinking (which I’m sure there is a minority of Illinoisans who sympathize with them) will be the hard-core ideologues who want to live in their own, small-minded world.

That wouldn’t be so bad, except they also think the rest of us are supposed to live there with them in a subordinate role!

  -30-

Things got done during Quinn administration despite General Assembly preference for inaction

I can already hear the trash talk that will be spewed about Pat Quinn – the governor whose term ends Monday at Noon was a failure who brought down Illinois and whose very existence must be eradicated (along with that of Barack Obama) from history.

They’re the people who literally will be praying that Quinn gets smacked on the behind by the door that closes behind him when he leaves!

NOW ANYBODY WITH sense realizes how over the top that kind of rhetoric is. Because if anything, Quinn was the governor who managed to get a few things done despite the General Assembly’s desire at times to do nothing.

That attitude was most blatant with what Quinn had hoped would be the farewell gesture of his six years as Illinois governor – a significant increase in the minimum wage required of companies that operate in this state.

Anybody who ever claims that Democrats run roughshod over the desires of the people is absurd, and the minimum wage issue is probably Exhibit A in that argument. The Quinn years were nothing like 1995-96 when Republicans dominated state government, and it took the state Supreme Court to strike down the most egregious measures.

There was that referendum question that showed two-thirds of Illinoisans would have supported an increase. Yet the Legislature felt compelled to do nothing. There wasn’t even a token effort made on the issue.

IT IS BECAUSE Democrats, by their nature, are capable of being an ornery lot who can’t get along with themselves. The idea of Quinn leading some plot to impose his own will with a sympathetic Legislature doing his bidding is ridiculous.

It seems some people have watched the City Council way too much. Quinn is not Mayor Rahm Emanuel by any means!

There are the two issues that many political observers are citing as the key parts of the Quinn gubernatorial legacy – abolishing the death penalty in Illinois and actually approving the concept of legitimate marriage for gay couples (rather than having a court strike down the existing laws that banned such marriages).

Yet let’s be honest. Who thinks that Quinn came up with those ideas and gave them to us?

ELIMINATING CAPITAL PUNISHMENT in Illinois was an idea that had lingered for more than a decade since the days of George Ryan. Gay marriage came to other states, including some in the Midwestern U.S., long before it came to the Land of Lincoln.

It was when the Legislature could no longer resist the national trends that they finally acted as they did – and I’m sure there are a few people who believe now that there’s a Republican as governor, it is the first step toward repealing gay marriage and bringing back lethal injection.

Let’s also consider the ample problems our state faces in funding the pension programs maintained for state workers and educators.

How many years was the Legislature willing to ignore all the talk about how severe the debt had grown? How many “drop dead” dates passed before the Legislature finally went along with a Quinn desire.

AND HOW MANY of the legislators are secretly hoping that resolution manages to get shot down by the Supreme Court of Illinois – leaving state government (let alone the city and Cook County government problems that the Legislature also has to address) in just as big a mess as ever.

My own view of Quinn’s “legacy” is that he carried on his mentality of being the gadfly of Illinois government – the pain-in-the-behind who constantly pointed out the problems.

Back in those days, he often was laughed at, if not outright ignored, by legislators – who kept that same mentality in place once he became the head of the state’s executive branch.

I remember one legislator (a Democrat and member in good standing with the black caucus) once telling me that Quinn’s temperament was so quirky that he couldn’t be trusted to stand up in support for them. So they felt no compulsion to support him in return!

SO THAT IS most likely the Quinn “legacy;” not fully appreciated until after he’s gone and we see how much worse things can become (You know they will!).

And that date back in January of 2009 when Quinn entered the state Senate chambers to cheers from legislators in the moments following the impeachment of Rod Blagojevich now feels like it was even more distant in time than the Chicago Cubs’ last World Series title.

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High court to get chances to satisfy ideologues, or do the right thing

I’m sure the ideologues of our society are drooling at the bit, on account of the chance that the conservative wing of the Supreme Court of the United States will have a chance in coming months to turn back a pair of issues they detest.

The issues being the legitimacy of the Affordable Care Act, and whether gay couples ought to be able to marry just like others in our society.

THE LATTER ISSUE got put into circumstances last week that will force the Supreme Court to address the issue – despite their desire expressed in recent months to avoid having to take a stance.

While the Supreme Court on Friday said it would hear the case involving a challenge to the subsidies that make it possible to provide health insurance to people at a cost they can afford.

         

Before I go further, I should point out that I am amongst the people who have health insurance these days because of the federal initiative that is the key point of President Barack Obama’s legacy. Being a freelance writer means I work for no one specifically who is willing to provide me a health insurance policy as a benefit.

I qualify for a tax break that covers about 40 percent of the cost of my health insurance policy. The rest of the cost comes out of my own pocket.

YET THE SUBSIDIES that allow for me to receive a financial break on buying my own health insurance are the subject of a lawsuit. The federal Court of Appeals based in Richmond, Va., has ruled they are legitimate. Which has critics of health care reform taking their matter to the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C.

That same court has previously ruled that the general concept of Obama’s health care reform initiative is constitutional. But they also have issued rulings that have restricted it.

The opponents of making health insurance more readily accessible would love it if they could knock down the subsidies, because it is the same basic strategy that people who oppose the idea of abortion being a legitimate medical procedure use in their political fights.

They push for so many restrictions on abortion that, for all practical purposes, it becomes next to impossible for many women to obtain. Which is why that referendum question last week in Illinois about whether insurance policies ought to include coverage for abortion – and the overwhelming “yes” vote – is significant.

IF THE IDEOLOGUES could make it too expensive for many to get health insurance, that certainly would go a long way toward disabling the Affordable Care Act. It would become a toothless beast.

We’ll have to see if Chief Justice John Roberts, Jr., once again sides with the less conservative members of the high court, who he thought back in 2012 were too inclined to reject health care reform solely on ideological grounds.

It also will be interesting to see what happens with regards to the concept of gay marriage – which last week had the federal Court of Appeals based in Cincinnati overturn lower court rulings that would have upheld the concept in Michigan and Ohio, along with Kentucky and Tennessee.

We in Chicago are part of a different federal court district – one that has supported the gay marriage concept. We in Illinois also have a Legislature and governor who have signed the change into our law.

BUT IT MEANS this is now officially an issue where the nation becomes a checkerboard of policies – even though the dividing line between support and hostility toward gay marriage no longer is State Line Road between the East Side neighborhood and Hammond, Ind., but now is Michigan City, Ind., and the land to the north.

The high court earlier this autumn went counter to what legal experts expected and decided to ignore the issue. I suspected then the high court’s ideologues did not want to be in a position of having to legitimize the marriage concept, so they chose to do nothing.

Instead, the appeals court created a difference, and now the nation’s high court is going to have to figure out the consistency in policy for the United States as a whole. This clearly is not a “state” issue, even though the ideologues would like it to be because the “checkerboard” concept would add all the more confusion to the matter.

Which means the Supreme Court will have to be called upon in a pair of issues to ultimately decide the same thing – whether to clarify, or further confuse, the populace of our society.

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