Just as there are “no round triangles,” there are “no gay marriages.”
So says David E. Smith, executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, the anti-gay hate group working to defeat efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois.
Smith told NBC News in Chicago that same-sex marriage shouldn’t — and won’t — pass during the General Assembly’s lame duck session next month.
The word “marriage” itself linguistically means something. No one’s going around trying to redefine triangles as round. There are no round triangles. There are no gay marriages. There’s going to have to be a distinction between marriages that are gay marriages, or genderless, you might say, and those that are actually man and woman who produce children: procreative.
[…]
(Gays) don’t have the right to go around and demand that we redefine a historical institution that has been understood for thousands of years as the union of one man and one woman.
Smith said he feels deceived by marriage equality advocates who “promised” two years ago that civil unions were “as far as we’re going to go.”
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Sponsors of the bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois say they are close to securing enough support to bring the bill up for vote during the legislature’s lame duck session, beginning Jan. 2.
The bill needs at least 60 votes in the House and 30 votes in the Senate before moving to Gov. Pat Quinn’s desk. Quinn indicated he will sign the bill into law and has also urged lawmakers to vote in favor of it.
The Illinois Family Institute has been designated an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
