Civil unions for Illinois

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I wonder if muon2 can give us any inside scoop here.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

muon,

I've heard that argument before, but I've never heard any "science" for it.  Is there any empirical evidence to suggest that sham marriages are a particularly high proportion of gay domestic partnership cases?  I'm just going to paraphrase the status quo logic here, and I think my issue with it should be evident.

Marriage is broken, because people are abusing entitlements.  Because there are fewer gays, proportionally higher entitlement abuse is likely.  We should allow heterosexuals to marry as stands, but until the system is fixed, we should not allow homosexuals.

This, of course, assumes that the benefits outweigh the costs of entitling more heterosexuals, but not more homosexuals; but no empirical cost-benefits calculations are involved or attempted; and gays are the only ones whose entitlements are contingent on proving their mettle.  Basically, they're required to furnish unspecified proof of an unspecified benefits:cost ratio for including their relationships, and new heterosexual couples aren't.  This seems like distinctly unscientific and unfair public policy to me, or do I misunderstand?

You make an argument that I think applies well to marriage, but the case here is with civil unions. The IL law creates a class called civil union that is the same as marriage for all aspects of state law, but calls it by a new name. I have a philosophical problem with laws that are a distinction without a difference. In my experience when two laws are passed that have identical content but different names, then there are inevitable conflicts that arise. If a new category is established it should have clearly different application.

In the 1990's there was a big case in IL zoning law that dealt with the confusion between variances and special uses. In many ways they looked the same in the statute. The court found that for these terms to be meaningful in the law they must refer to distinctly different situations, and since the statute didn't draw a difference the court did. I agree with that legal philosophy.

I also think that the separate classification would be useful for other reasons. The proponents of IL civil unions argued that this would create a means for senior citizens of opposite gender to get visitation and health care decision powers for a partner without marriage. I agree that would be very useful as I know seniors for whom that would apply. Part of the reason seniors in that situation don't marry is because of their indivdiual benefits and a desire to not have to change them. They also are not interested in having to divorce should they wish to terminate that relationship. In that case this new law fails, since any benefit based in state law is also present for the partners and termination requires exactly the same divorce procedure as marriage.
 

So in essence, if I understand your point, you voted against a gay marriage bill, even though that's not what it was called?  Or did I miss it completely?

I'm curious what feedback prior to the vote your consitutents provided to your office.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Part 2 of the question. Email on the bill ran 112 to support and 438 to oppose. State wide polling in October by the Paul Simon Institute found 33% in favor of gay marriage, 33% in favor of civil unions with some of the same rights, and 24% opposed to either. I'm fascinated that the media reports this law as if it were from category 2 and uses "some of the same rights" in their stories. There is no difference under state law, so any differences occur only because of federal law, which is not what I heard people tell me they think "some" means.

By those email numbers it seems your district doesn't care to draw a distinction between gay marriage or civil unions, even if there were a differentiation in the language of the bills, but that's just my guess....am I far off?