Laurie Higgins takes the Illinois GOP to school:
There are many things wrong with Illinois politics, but today our attention should turn to the feckless and destructive antics of the chair of the Illinois Republican Party: Pat Brady. On this the first working day of the New Year, the purported standard-bearer for conservatism in Illinois is busy calling Illinois Republican lawmakers, urging them to vote to destroy marriage. Yes, you heard that right. IL GOP Chair Pat Brady is trying to convince Republican state lawmakers that marriage has no intrinsic connection to gender, sexual complementarity, or procreative potential.
Does anyone think his efforts resulted from deep study of the public purposes of marriage or the implications of eliminating the central defining feature of marriage? Does anyone think he has seriously studied the work of Princeton Law professor, Robert George on what marriage is? Or like me, do you think Brady’s frenetic efforts to pervert marriage reflect a Macbethian desire for power and position.
As Brady works to undermine marriage, the family, and, by the way, the Republican Party platform, he demonstrates the kind of intellectual and moral vacuity that Illinoisans have come to expect from their politicians.
Brady argues that this is an “equality issue.” Say what? Those Illinoisans who choose to place their same-sex attraction at the center of their identity are perfectly free to participate in the sexually complementary public institution of marriage. They choose not to participate in it.
Homosexuals are not being treated unequally, and they are not requesting equality. They are demanding the special privilege of unilaterally jettisoning the central defining feature of marriage: sexual complementarity.