Illinois Governor Pat Quinn (D) has announced that the recently passed (House vote 61-52 Senate vote 32-24)  Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act will be signed into law early in the new year, and the measure will go into effect on July 1, 2011.

On that date, Illinois will join California, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey and Nevada as the 6th state with a state-based scheme to comprehensively recognize and protect same-sex couples under state law as extensively as they can without giving them access to marriage.

Previously New Hampshire, Connecticut and Vermont had civil unions but have since enacted marriage equality. Iowa, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia also allow same-sex couples to marry.

WATCH: Illinois State Sen. Rail Against Hypocrisy

Illinois House Passes Civil Unions Bill 61-52!

The Illinois House of Representatives passed a civil unions bill by a vote of 61-52 on Tuesday afternoon, with swift passage expected in the more liberal Illinois State Senate by the end of the day and SB 1617 ending up on Governor Pat Quinn's desk shortly thereafter.

Chicago Pride covered the story thusly:

Openly gay Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who co-sponsored SB 1716, started his opening statement at 5:17 p.m on Tuesday. "Once in every generation," he said, "legislatures across the country have a chance to advance the cause of liberty and justice for all."

The Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act (SB 1716) which passed to cheers in the chamber with a 61-52 majority vote, received support from the Democratic leadership in Springfield, including Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), Senate President John Cullerton (D-Chicago) and Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, who was present.


[...]


Conservative groups, including the Catholic Conference of Illinois and Washington D.C.-based National Organization for Marriage (NOM), lobbied hard against the bill.

The bill does not recognize same-sex marriages, but will provide the same spousal rights to same-sex partners when it comes to surrogate decision-making for medical treatment, survivorship, adoptions, and accident and health insurance.

California, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon and Washington have passed laws allowing same sex civil unions. Same-sex couples can marry in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Washington D.C. and Iowa.

Congratulations to Illinois! I think it is quite amusing that heterosexual supremacists are now left making the counterfactual claim that "civil unions are identical to marriage" and are thus opposing measures that many in the LGBT community reject as "separate but unequal."

Fight Over Ill. Civil Unions Bill Coming Next Week

Illinois is quickly becoming the site for a legislative battle royale next week over LGBT equality as the State Legislature is expected to take up Senate Bill 1617, a bill to enact civil unions (also known as comprehensive domestic partnerships).

The bill is expected to come up for a vote on Tuesday November 30th and recently elected Democratic Governor Pat Quinn has agreed to sign the measure into law.

The expected opposition to the civil rights legislation from heterosexual supremacists and religious theocrats is starting to emerge:

The head of Chicago's Roman Catholic archdiocese Monday portrayed legislation authorizing civil unions between gay and lesbian couples as an initiative that would ''change the nature of marriage'' and urged state lawmakers to reject it.

''Everyone has a right to marry, but no one has the right to change the nature of marriage,'' Cardinal Francis George said in a statement. ''Marriage is what it is and always has been, no matter what a Legislature decides to do; however, the public understanding of marriage will be negatively affected by passage of a bill that ignores the natural fact that sexual complementarity is at the core of marriage.''

Note the words "sexual complementarity" being described as a "natural fact" at the "core of marriage" by the man of faith. He is trying to combine the tautological argument against marriage equality (marriage is defined as only between a man and a woman) with the gender confusion argument ("who will be the wife?"). Of course, both of these arguments can be easily refuted by the easily discernible fact that marriage in 2010 is not based on subordination of women and that there are tens of thousands of legally married same-sex couples in the United States.

But the openly LGBT sponsors of Senate Bill1617 say it best:

The proposal, pushed by Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) and Rep. Deb Mell (D-Chicago), would grant new spousal rights to same-sex partners in a civil union, putting them on par legally with heterosexual married couples when it comes to surrogate decision-making for medical treatment, survivorship, adoptions and accident and health insurance, for example.

But Harris said the legislation does nothing to change the definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, which currently is spelled out in state law.

''I'd say either he is being misinformed about the state of the law in Illinois or they're trying to make more of it than there really is,'' Harris said in response to George's statements.

A portion of Senate Bill 1716 explicitly states that the proposal is not intended to ''interfere with or regulate the religious practice of any religious body.'' The bill goes on to state that religious bodies are ''free to choose whether or not to solemnize or officiate a civil union."

It should be interesting to see if Equality Illinois can prevail over NOM next week.

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God

Outed Ill. Senate Candidate Kirk (R) Caught Discussing Voter Suppression

U.S. Representative Mark Kirk, who has recently been outed as a gay man by blogger Mike Rogers, and is currently in a very tight race with Alexi Giannoulias for the Illinois Senate seat once held by Barack Obama has been caught on tape discussing the long-running, illegal Republican practice of minority vote suppression.

Talking Points Memo reports:

Kirk's campaign confirmed the candidate was secretly taped last week as he was talking about his anti-voter fraud effort.

"These are lawyers and other people that will be deployed in key, vulnerable precincts, for example, South and West sides of Chicago, Rockford, Metro East, where the other side might be tempted to jigger the numbers somewhat," he said in the audio posted on YouTube.

As TPMMuckraker has reported, accusations from conservatives that ineligible voters are fraudulently stealing elections for Democrats have continued to fly in the 2010 campaign cycle, despite the lack of evidence of widespread voter fraud. "Voter fraud" has been the rally cry for conservative groups seeking to make it more difficult to cast ballots and suppress minority voter turnout.

Kirk is widely considered the most moderate of the potential Republican senators to take office in January 2011. What's interesting here is that despite being known as a closeted homosexual, he is still a Republican at  heart, with the opposition to minority voting that that entails. Another example of the surprises intersectionality can produce!

Illinois Senate Candidate Mark Kirk (R) Outed!

Mike Rogers, the man who outed Senator Larry Craig in 2006, more than a year before the Senator was arrested in a Minneapolis airport for his "wide stance" has today outed another Republican member of Congress, Mark Kirk, who also happens to be the GOP nominee to take over Barack Obama's old Senate seat representing Illinois!

Kirk is considered a moderate Republican, but he did not vote to repeal DADT in the House recently (only 5 Republicans voted against DADT repeal: Charles Djou of Hawaii), Joseph Cao of Louisiana, Judy Biggert of Illinois), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, and Ron Paul of Texas) leading Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBT group, to finally endorse Alexi Giannoulias, Kirk's Democratic opponent for the Illinois U.S. Senate seat.

Now, Kirk joins other Republican congressional hypocrites like David Dreier (R-CA) who have been outed by Mike Rogers but vote against LGBT equality. Rogers is never wrong, and this is what he says about Kirk:

In an effort to move the base in the Illinois Senate race, Kirk decided to tack right and that means throwing the gays (like him) under the bus. And once he voted that way, the phone began to ring. Not one or two, or three but 5 separate individuals contacted me about the now divorced Mr. Kirk. (Mr. and Mrs. Kirk were married from 2001 to 2009, the marriage produced no children.)

Within hours of the DADT repeal vote I was contacted by two people who knew Kirk from his college days.

"In law school in DC everyone knew Mark was gay," the first source told me. I explained that the information was intriguing, it would not be enough to go on. He continued, "But I had sex with him a number of times." Well, now we're onto something I thought. "Could someone verify for me that you knew Kirk and went to school with him?" I asked. "Yes" was the swift reply. "Could you recall personal details about Kirk that others may not know?" "Yes," he said.

And he did.

The next source claimed to have gone to undergraduate school with Kirk. I asked for proof that he and Kirk were in school together and once that was shared with me, I met with the source. The source introduced me to a man who had also been friends with Kirk in college. They both shared with me their interactions with Kirk, including one sexual in nature. The source who claimed to have sex with Kirk described personal details about the House, um, er, "member." The description was the same as the first source.

[...]

Then Kirk became a hypocrite. Kirk voted against repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, despite his being a closeted gay man in the military. As a Commander in the Navy Reserves Kirk has voted to keep a policy that if he were investigated under he would be tossed.

Recently we learned that it's not just his being a closeted gay man that Kirk lies about; he has a habit of making up awards supposedly given to him by the Navy.

Boo yah!

This Is Why I Am Confident Obama Will Win

This great graphic from DailyKos highlights the change in polling in favor of Barack Obama from September 19th through October 23rd in the eight Big Ten battleground states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Minnesota. Obama is now leading stronly (over 50%) in every single one of the battleground states, and several of them have early voting! By election day, an estimated one-third of all Americans will have voted already.

Do you really think McCain can make up the difference in all of these states in a dozen days? I don't.