In March of 2020, the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor JB Pritzker issued a series of emergency orders. Executive Order 2020-04, issued on March 13, 2020, was the governor’s first time seizing emergency power. Under the Illinois Emergency Management Agency Act, the governor can issue a state of emergency declaring a disaster within the state, giving himself 30 days of emergency power. The governor, in a state of emergency, has complete control over all state institutions and public health. Although the measure intends to streamline governmental response in times of disaster, Governor Pritzker exploited a loophole in the law and reissued the executive order 22 times.

The governor reissued the executive order on October 15th extending his emergency powers until November 13th. At the time of the most recent order, the state had been in a continuous state of emergency for 581 days. As of October 20th, Pritzker has issued 91 executive orders, many of which have no connection to COVID. The legislature is not meeting to address this issue, and our representatives are prevented from fulfilling their duty to their constituency. 

As a result of the restrictions on the Illinois General Assembly, a great deal of state business has been left undone, and the voices of Illinois citizens have gone unheard. State Representatives Dan Ugaste (R-Geneva), Mark Batinick (R-Plainfield), Avery Bourne (R-Morrisonville), and Norine Hammond (R-Macomb) held a press conference on Wednesday, October 20th, to discuss the problem and how Republican members of the Illinois House intend to respond. Several representatives have joined together to try to end the governor’s unilateral rule. Rep. Ugaste has authored HB 843, a bill allowing the governor to extend a 30-day declaration of emergency – but only with the written approval of the Illinois General Assembly obtained within five days of the extension. This bill would also allow the General Assembly to adopt a joint resolution declaring the extension void.

Watch the video of their press conference here below:

Currently, the bill is stalled in the Rules Committee, unable to be brought to a vote in the House. The Rules Committee consists of State Representatives Greg Harris (D-13th District), Dan Brady (R-105th District), Tom Demmer (R-90th District), Jehan Gordon-Booth (D-92nd District), and Elizabeth Hernandez (D-24th District). Unless the Rules Committee meets to discuss the bill, it will not go forward. In the previous General Assembly, Rep. Ugaste authored HB 5790, a bill requiring the same approval for extending emergency rule. As the bill never went forward, Rep. Ugaste is resubmitting it to the current 102nd General Assembly as HB 843.

Unilateral rule by Governor Pritzker has created a tyrannical government in our state. The U.S. Constitution and the Illinois Constitution ensure a system of checks and balances intended to prevent dictatorships from forming and allow for the people’s representation. By utilizing a continuous state of emergency, Governor Pritzker has set himself up as a de facto king.

Pritzker has issued numerous orders without a single public debate or hearing. The impact of this tyrannical rule is devastating. Rep. Batinick noted that the broad-spectrum rules of school closures and masking are not always beneficial and may have lasting effects on income gaps and education. He also stated that, although the removal of mandates might not occur even if the legislature were meeting, nevertheless, all rules and orders should be open to a public debate in which experts could testify. Without public debate and complete transparency, the people of Illinois will continue to suffer from governmental overreach.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to let your state lawmakers know that you oppose the continued unilateral rule of Governor Pritzker and the lack of checks and balances in our state government. Please ask them to co-sponsor HB 843. Also, demand that this bill get a hearing in committee so that it can advance to the Illinois House for a vote. 

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Your tax-deductible donation is greatly appreciated!

Thousands of children are alive today because pro-life sidewalk counselors stand outside abortion clinics offering encouragement and information about the abortion alternatives to pregnant mothers. It is one of the most effective ways to save the unborn. New legislation, however, threatens this vital work. Chicago state lawmakers have introduced HB 3735 which would essentially create a censorship zone around abortion clinics.

Using subjective and broad language, the bill says counselors who are convicted of “intimidation” against pregnant mothers and staff members entering the abortion clinic, will be subject to longer prison stays and/or fines. Sponsored by State Representatives Deb Conroy (D-Villa Park), Silvana Tabares (D-Chicago), Greg Harris (D-Chicago), and John D’Amico (D-Chicago), HB 3735 adds acts of intimidation and violence in the vicinity of abortion clinics to the list of aggravating factors in the criminal code. An aggravating factor is a fact or circumstance that increases the severity or culpability of the criminal act. If this bill were to pass, people accused of intimidation will receive harsher sentences simply because they were near an abortion clinic.

This bill is problematic in several ways.

First, the crimes of harassment and violent actions which the bill claims to prevent are already covered under the criminal code. Creating a special zone for harsher penalties around abortion clinics is clearly meant to intimidate pro-life sidewalk counselors.

Second, this bill seeks to solve a problem that does not exist. There is no evidence that people are being harassed while walking into abortion clinics by sidewalk counselors or anyone else.

Third, the bill raises multiple free speech issues. The U.S. Supreme Court has already held in McCullen v. Coakley that buffer zones preventing sidewalk counselors from coming near an abortion clinic entrance unconstitutionally restrict free speech. It is unclear whether HB 3537 is broad enough to protect the free speech rights of those sidewalk counselors. This bill may also be unconstitutionally aimed to restrict pro-life speech over other forms of speech.

Finally, the bill specifically mentions abortion clinic staff members as receiving this special protection. One can easily foresee abortion clinic staff using such a law to intimidate and silence pro-life counselors and to justify reporting them to the police when no harassment or violent actions have been perpetrated.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to contact your state representative to tell him or her that HB 3735 is unnecessary and jeopardizes both free speech and the lifesaving work of sidewalk counseling. Then politely urge your representative to vote NO on HB 3735.

IFI Forums: Climate Change & the Christian

Join us during the last week of April as we have Dr. Calvin Beisner, the founder & national spokesman for The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation discuss the Christian responsibility to the environment as we learn how to discern truth and myth in the climate change controversy.

April 25th in Rockford
April 26th in Arlington Heights
April 27th in Orland Park
April 28th in Peoria

Click HERE to learn more!

Illinois House Committee Approves HB 1785
Falsified Birth Certificates

This morning, the Illinois House Human Services Committee held a hearing on a highly controversial proposal that would legalize fraud through the alteration of birth certificates by gender-dysphoric persons who wish to have the government reinforce their deceit.

The bill passed on a party line vote: 7 Democrats voted yea, while 4 Republicans voted no.

State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who represents a segment of Chicago’s gay community, is one of three openly homosexual members of the Illinois General Assembly and an LGBT activist, is once again pushing this deceit, as he did last session.

HB 1785 would amend the Vital Records Act to allow transgender Illinoisans to easily change their gender and name on their birth certificate. According to HB 1785, all that would be needed is for a licensed health care worker or mental health professional to issue a declaration that the gender dysphoric person has undergone “gender transition treatment,” which doesn’t necessarily include surgery.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email message to your state representative to ask him/her to reject HB 1785 and uphold birth certificates as legal documents.  The state of Illinois has no duty or right to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates.  Ask your lawmaker to vote NO to the Birth Certificate Designation Act, HB 1785.

IFI’s Laurie Higgins‘ rightly pointed out in an article earlier this year:

[I]t’s critical to remember that cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and surgical mutilations do not turn males into females or vice versa. Compassion and a commitment to truth dictate that we must not treat students who take cross-sex hormones as if they are in reality the sex they are not.

And the government should never be required to participate in a science-denying fiction.

It is staggering to see a modern civilization snookered into accepting (or pretending to accept) the science-denying superstition that surgical tinkering and hormone-doping can turn a man into a woman or vice versa. The ordinary men and women behind the curtain promoting this superstition know full well that no human’s sex can change, so they had to invent new language to confuse and deceive…

Please take action today to let your state representative know what you think of this legislation.  The Capitol switchboard number is (217) 782-2000.

Please also note that this bill is cosponsored by State Representatives Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), Barbara Flynn Currie (D-Chicago), Will Guzzardi (D-Chicago), Emanuel Chris Welch (D-Westchester), Sam Yingling (D-Round Lake Beach), Cynthia Soto (D-Chicago), La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago), Silvana Tabares (D-Chicago), Ann Williams (D-Chicago), Carol Ammons (D-Champaign), Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston), Litesa Wallace (D-Rockford), Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), Theresa Mah (D-Chicago), Lou Lang (D-Skokie), and Laura Fine (D-Glenview).

Organizations lobbying in favor of this legislation include:  the ACLU of Illinois, Equality Illinois, Trans-Life Center, and Safe Schools Alliance.

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Equality Illinois, Illinois’ most prominent cheerleader for all things sexually deviant—especially doctrinaire and destructive legislation—is cheering the reintroduction of a bill that would make it even easier for gender-dysphoric persons to have their birth certificates legally falsified.

House Bill 1785, the “Birth Certificate Designation Act,” introduced by State Representative Greg Harris and co-sponsored by the usual suspects, like Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), Robyn Gabel (D-Evanston), and Sara Feigenholtz (D-Chicago), would amend the Vital Records Act to allow those Illinoisans who wish they were the opposite sex to enlist the government in their effort to deceive.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to send an email message to your state representative to ask him/her to reject HB 1785 and uphold birth certificates as legal documents.  The state of Illinois has no duty or right to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to falsify their birth certificates.

Background
Currently, a sex-rejecting Illinoisan who seeks a falsified birth certificate must present an affidavit from a physician certifying that he or she has performed surgery on the sex-rejecting person. Harris and his accomplices seek to make this process easier by allowing doctors, advanced practice nurses, physician assistants, and licensed mental health professionals from any state provide “declarations” that the patient has “undergone treatment…for the purpose of gender transition.” In an attempt to conceal that this effort enlists government to participate in fraud, the bill’s sponsors change the wording from “sex change” to “change of sex designation,” thereby implicitly acknowledging the science-denying nature of their quest: No one’s sex can change.

For those who are unclear about what this change would mean, we have the confused attorney for the ACLU of Illinois, John Knight (who is suing District 211 on behalf of a boy who wants to be a girl) to offer clarity:

House Bill 1785 protects Illinoisans facing the unnecessary choice between living without a birth certificate that conforms with [sic] who they are and undergoing surgery they may not want or need. The scientific and medical community agrees that surgery is not necessary medical treatment for transgender people and shouldn’t be required to obtain an accurate birth certificate.

It is decidedly not accurate for a birth certificate to state that a person who is objectively male and was identified at birth as such to be changed to state that this person was identified at birth as female.

Many may not know that it can take as little as two visits and filling out some questionnaires for a certified mental health professional to declare that a sex-rejecting 18-year-old has undergone treatment for the purpose of gender transition.

Obama’s Department of Education provides clear evidence of where Leftist thinking is going. His Education Department mandated that schools treat students in every way as if they are the sex they want to be. According to his diktat, no cross-dressing, hormone-doping, or surgical mutilations are needed for students to be treated as if they are the sex they are not. No affidavit from a medical professional certifying that the student is undergoing treatment for gender dysphoria is needed. Not even parental permission can be required in order for a student to access opposite-sex restrooms, locker rooms, and hotel rooms on school-sponsored overnight trips. All that’s required is a student’s declaration that he or she “identifies” as the opposite sex.

That said, it’s critical to remember that cross-dressing, hormone-doping, and surgical mutilations do not turn males into females or vice versa. Compassion and a commitment to truth dictate that we must not treat students who take cross-sex hormones as if they are in reality the sex they are not.

And the government should never be required to participate in a science-denying fiction.

It is staggering to see a modern civilization snookered into accepting (or pretending to accept) the science-denying superstition that surgical tinkering and hormone-doping can turn a man into a woman or vice versa. The ordinary men and women behind the curtain promoting this superstition know full well that no human’s sex can change, so they had to invent new language to confuse and deceive. Thus, we hear the terms “transgender,” “transman,” “transwoman,” “cisgender,” “cisman,” and “cisgender.”

These terms are intended to conceal that humans have an objective, immutable biological sex that cannot change. And these terms are intended to create the illusion that the disordered desire to be the opposite sex (i.e., “transgender”) is ontologically equivalent to being that sex, hence the invention of the term “cisgender.” “Cisgender” refers to people whose “gender identity” (i.e., their subjective feelings about their sex) aligns with their objective, immutable sex. By creating a word that emphasizes subjective feelings about one’s sex rather than one’s sex, Leftists have managed to distract and delude otherwise science-respecting people.

There’s another new word concocted to normalize disordered feelings about one’s sex. That word is “gender marker.” This was invented to smooth passage of laws that permit gender-dysphoric men and women to have their birth certificates legally falsified, thus Equality Illinois’ press release states that current laws allow a person to “correct” the “gender marker” on his or her birth certificate only “if they have undergone a surgical procedure.”

A formerly rational society understood that birth certificates record the sex of a child as identified by a doctor at birth. In a convoluted rhetorical scheme, the Left now says that birth certificates record the “gender marker” that doctors “assign” babies at birth. The ability to get purportedly rational, science-respecting lawmakers to pass laws mandating that government commit fraud depends on the acceptance of this rhetorical non-sense.

What Illinois actually needs is a law prohibiting persons from having the sex designation on their birth certificates changed unless they produce an affidavit from a medical doctor certifying that they have an intersex condition, which are objective diagnosable disorders—wholly distinct from “transgenderism”—that result in “a discrepancy between the external genitals and the internal genitals (the testes and ovaries).” The Left likes to conflate “transgenderism” with intersex disorders in order to muddy the ontological, moral, and political waters.

Anti-nature superstitions cannot endure, so this one will eventually be tossed into the dustbin of history that holds in it scores of other abandoned superstitions. Tragically, countless men, women, and children will suffer before that happens. When that day comes, every activist, school employee, politician, and ordinary citizen who promoted lies or cowardly acquiesced to them will have to confront his or her own culpability for the incalculable damage that will have been done to so many. Don’t be one of those people. Speak truth persistently and courageously.

Read more recent articles from Laurie:

The Radical “Trans”-Formation of America

New Trier High School Avoids Diversity Like the Plague

Highlights Magazine for Children Affirms Homoeroticism

Join IFI at our Feb. 18th Worldview Conference

We are excited about our third annual Worldview Conference featuring world-renowned theologian Dr. Frank Turek on Sat., Feb. 18, 2017 in Barrington. Dr. Turek is s a dynamic speaker and the award-winning author of “I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist”

Join us for a wonderful opportunity to take enhance your biblical worldview and equip you to more effectively engage the culture:

Click HERE to learn more or to register!

State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) and his leftist accomplices, endlessly involved in trying to subvert truth and reality, have introduced the Birth Certificate Sex Designation bill (HB 6073) to make it easier for men and women who wish they were the opposite sex to obtain falsified birth certificates. Harris’ first chief co-sponsor was Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago), both of whom are at the forefront of every legislative effort that serves the homosexual community of which they are part.

The absurdity and unscientific nature of the content of HB 6073 reveals the absurdity of the law it seeks to amend. This bill proposes to change a reference in the law from “sex change” to “change of sex designation.”

First, this change implicitly acknowledges the true fact that no one’s sex can change. Second, it demonstrates that birth certificates are being rendered meaningless. Birth certificates were intended as legal documents identifying objective birth facts. Gender-dysphoric men who were male at birth remain male. Gender-dysphoric women who were female at birth remain in perpetuity female. Gender-dysphoric men who were “designated” male at birth remain designated at birth male. Gender-dysphoric women who were “designated” female at birth remain designated at birth female. No amount or degree of legal or rhetorical chicanery can change what they were designated at birth. When liberals in Springfield figure out how to manipulate time, maybe this bill will make sense. Now it’s merely an exercise in nonsensical legislative legerdemain.

This bill changes the requirements for acquiring a new (and falsified) birth certificate. Currently, gender-dysphoric persons must present an “affidavit” from a “physician” confirming that the gender-dysphoric person has had “an operation” to try to conceal their actual sex. The proposed changes would nix the whole “affidavit” requirement, changing it to a bar far easier to climb over. If this bill passes, all that gender-dysphoric persons will need is a “declaration” from any “licensed medical or mental health professional who has treated or evaluated a person stating that the person has undergone treatment that is clinically appropriate for that individual for the purpose of gender transition, based on contemporary medical standards.”

And what kinds of treatments, inquiring minds might be asking, are included in the “clinically appropriate” toolbox for gender-dysphoric individuals? Will a gender-dysphoric person be required to have had surgery to tamper with their private parts? Nope. Will he (I am using the moribund universal “he”) be required to have received or currently be receiving cross-sex hormone treatments? Nope. Will he be required to be receiving psychological counseling for his gender-dysphoria? Nope. All that will be legally required in order to receive a de facto falsified birth certificate is a “declaration” from a licensed mental health professional who states that this person has received some treatment deemed appropriate by contemporary standards established by the dominant mental health organizations that are drenched in “progressive” socio-political dogma. That’s a bar so low and bendy that even a toddler could scramble over it.

Of course, not even surgical mutilation, hormone-blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cross-dressing can change a person’s sex at birth or in adulthood. And none of these anti-treatments (Treatments imply a disorder, and one’s sex is not a disorder) can change what these persons were designated at birth.

This is what our elected representatives waste their time and our taxes on: making it ever easier for gender-dysphoric persons to pretend they are the opposite sex.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your state representative to ask him/her to uphold births as accurate legal documents.

Ask them to vote NO to HB 6073.

Concerned about Common Core Standards?

Join us on April 8th in Orland Park for yet another IFI Forum, this time exploring The Case Against Common Core with Dr. Duke Pesta.  Click HERE for more information.

Click HERE for a flyer of the event.

UGLY-HEAD-REARING ALERT

Two years ago, yet another “anti-bullying” law (HB 5290) was defeated in the Illinois Senate. It has now been resurrected by one of Springfield’s most troubling homosexual activist lawmakers, State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) as HB 5707.

Particular Illinois lawmakers seem to believe that it’s not possible for the government to do enough to eradicate beliefs with which they disagree—including the moral, philosophical, and political beliefs of other people’s children. The beliefs these lawmakers seek to eradicate are conservative beliefs on issues related to homosexuality and gender confusion.

Cassidy’s resurrected bill is not centrally about ending bullying, which is a goal all decent people share. Illinois already has a more than ample anti-bullying law, which passed in June, 2010 and was followed up with over 100 pages of implementation recommendations that appear on the Illinois State Board of Education website.

No, this bill is centrally about using government resources to advance the non-factual Leftist assumption that conservative morals beliefs are the hateful, ignorant cause of bullying.

Take ACTION:  Click HERE to contact your representative and urge him/her to oppose HB 5707.  

The last time this politically motivated bill came around, the bill’s sponsors were asked (by even some potential Democratic supporters) to include an opt-out provision that would allow students and staff members to opt-out of any presentations that would espouse non-factual beliefs about the nature and morality of homosexuality that violated their consciences. IFI agreed to remain neutral on the bill, if this wording were added:

No student or school employee shall be required to attend or participate in any anti-bullying program, activity, or assembly that infringes upon free expression or contradicts personal or religious beliefs.

Liberal sponsors of the bill refused to toss even that shard of a bone to conservatives.

Here’s an excerpt from a piece I wrote two years ago when the previous incarnation of this bill was proposed:

Cassidy stated that this additional law is needed because 3 school districts (out of over 900) have no policy and 20 do not have “adequate” bullying policy. What she failed to make clear during floor debates is that the 3 school districts that don’t have bullying policy are already in violation of existing law, so HB 5290 is unnecessary.

Furthermore, HB 5290…would do nothing about the 20 school districts that have—in Cassidy’s view—“inadequate” policy. If these 20 districts have bullying policy, they are in compliance with existing law.

To illustrate that “anti-bullying” programs that address homosexuality or gender confusion (aka “gender identity” or “gender expression”) are centrally about promoting “progressive” notions about homosexuality, just replace “sexual orientation” (a Leftist rhetorical creation) with another condition constituted by subjective feelings and volitional sexual acts.

Everyone knows that teenage girls who are promiscuous are often called ugly names. No decent person wants promiscuous girls bullied, so why don’t anti-bullying laws and school policies include promiscuity in their list of conditions for which students may not be bullied? Why don’t teachers show films in which promiscuity is portrayed positively? Why don’t schools invite speakers who affirm a sexually promiscuous identity to come talk to students about how bad it felt to be bullied in high school for their promiscuity? Why don’t they have “youth programming” in which promiscuity is affirmed? Why don’t teachers have students read and perform plays in which promiscuity is celebrated and disapproval of it is portrayed as ignorant, bigoted, hateful, provincialism—all in the service of ending bullying?

In addition to the indoctrination aspects of current “anti-bullying” efforts, there would be substantial costs associated with adopting the following recommendations in this bill:

• creating, implementing, and maintaining procedures for in-school anonymous reporting of alleged bullying incidents
• creating and implementing student “training programs,” “restorative measures,” and/or “social and emotional skill-building” exercises
• creating and implementing personnel training
• collecting, maintaining, analyzing, and reporting to the State Board of Education data related to the prevalence of bullying
• “reevaluating,” “reassessing,” “reviewing,” and “revising” (whew) school policy every two years  

Eight years ago, a purportedly “Catholic” colleague of mine in the writing center at Deerfield High School told me that she was so sure that conservative moral beliefs about homosexuality were wrong that she doesn’t think they should be allowed to be spoken in schools even as “progressive” views are espoused.

And Freeport, Maine public high school English teacher Rich Robinson said this about bullying:

Bullying happens when one feels threatened physically or emotionally….[I]f “you” cause a gay kid to feel “less than” because of his/her sexuality and the expressions [and by expressions, Robinson means volitional behaviors] that will naturally result, then I say “you” are a bully and need to be called out. This is what it means to protect kids.

In the view of “progressives,” if student A says something that makes student B who identifies as homosexual feel “less than,” then student A is a bully.

That, my friends, is what liberal lawmakers and “educators” believe and seek to impose through laws and curricula.

While you’re going about the business of opposing this bill, please ask both proponents of this bill as well as your local school administrators and board members this question:

If in a classroom or cafeteria discussion, a student were to state that homosexual attraction is disordered, or that homosexual acts are immoral, or that Illinois should not have legalized same-sex “marriage,” or that homosexual couples should not be permitted to adopt, is it possible under the wording of existing law that this student could be accused of bullying?

The question is not whether sponsors Kelly Cassidy, Greg Harris (D-Chicago), or Camille Lilly (D-Chicago) thinks it would happen, but rather whether it’s possible that it could happen.

And while you’re in a civic engagement mood, please send an email to your local high school and middle school superintendents, principals, and school board members asking these two easy-to-answer questions:

1. In the classroom, are teachers permitted to express their support for the legalization of same-sex “marriage” or adoption by homosexuals?
2. In the classroom, are teachers permitted to express their opposition to the legalization of same-sex “marriage” or adoption by homosexuals?

If they answer “no” to both questions, ask them how they communicate that message to teachers. If you get a response, please send it to IFI.

Become a monthly supporter of IFI.  Click HERE for more information.

IllinoisReview.com

For decades, liberals have been arguing that the government should never come between a woman and her doctor. But a bill before the Illinois House sponsored by Democrat State Representatives Kelly Cassidy, Naomi Jakobsson, Greg Harris, Ann Williams and Sara Feigenholtz would put the state right in middle of the relationship between a patient and his or her counselor.

HB 5569 , which provides that no mental health provider be legally allowed to engage in certain types of counseling with minors dealing with sexual identification issues, passed the Human Services Committee Wednesday morning by a vote of 9 to 6, and was placed on second order for discussion on the Illinois House floor.

“This bill is a government intrusion into the counseling room by those who have no business there. Where, with whom, and why a person seeks counseling is a private and personal matter,” wrote Illinois Family Institute executive director David E. Smith on his Facebook page after the bill passed committee.

“The manner of counseling is a decision between the client and provider. No government official has any business whatsoever telling someone what type of counseling to seek,” he said.

Take ACTION:  Contact your state representative to ask him/her to reject HB 5569 or any other legislative attempt to ban support and help to those young people dealing with unwanted same-sex attraction.  The Capitol switchboard number is (217) 782-2000.

To read more about this troubling legislation, please click HERE.

Over the weekend, I was made aware of the Facebook comments of two of Illinois’ elected lawmakers in response to my article on the impending marriage redefinition vote in which I examined the appeals to emotion that are relentlessly exploited by the Left to divert attention from the intellectual shallowness and inconsistency of the Left’s poor arguments.

These Facebook responses illustrate both the dishonesty and lack of maturity that also inform the movement to normalize homosexuality and pervert the legal definition of marriage.

The first was a comment from the bill’s chief sponsor State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) who either completely misunderstood one of the central points of my article or, more likely, intentionally misrepresented what I actually said.

Harris wrote that I believe:

Family values don’t include church going, homemaking, raising children, doing chores together or helping your spouse go through cancer if you happen to be a lesbian.

What I actually argued is that caring for children, managing finances, attending church, doing chores, and caring for one another during an illness does not mean the adults engaged in those activities are married. Note, I never claimed that those activities are unrelated to family life or family values. I said the presence of those activities does not mean that those engaged in them are in a marital union. I said that the presence of those activities does not mean that marriage is wholly unrelated to sexual complementarity. My point was clear that marriage is not constituted solely by those activities.

It is neither honest nor helpful to misrepresent an opponent’s argument. The public deserves more from the elected employees whose salaries they pay.

Moving from the dishonesty of politicians to the lack of maturity of politicians, we can look to the Facebook post of lesbian State Representative Kelly Cassidy (D-Chicago) who wrote this about me:

This is the same woman who described me [Cassidy] as a ‘perfervid promoter of all things homosexual.’ She [Higgins] definitely got a word of the day calendar for Christmas last year.

The response of this public servant who is pushing to radically change the legal definition of society’s bedrock social institution—a change that will diminish religious freedom; undermine the inherent right of children to be raised by a mother and father, preferably their own; inevitably lead to the legalization of plural unions—is to mock the fact that I know words that she apparently does not.

What Harris, Cassidy, Alderman Deb Mell, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Governor Patrick Quinn should do is respond to the questions about marriage that IFI has posed: What is marriage? Why is the government involved? If marriage is constituted solely by intense loving feelings, why should it be limited to two people? What is the origin and reason for the requirement that only two people may marry? If marriage is constituted solely by love with no inherent connection to reproductive potential, why shouldn’t close blood relatives or platonic friends be permitted to “marry”? Do children have an inherent right to be raised by a mother and father—preferably their own biological mothers and fathers?

Mockery, dishonesty, appeals to emotion, and a relentless refusal to respond to these central questions about marriage do not reflect well on our public servants and do not well serve the public.

We need to fight for marriage with intelligence, honesty, seriousness, tenacity, courage, conviction, and prayer.

 Please, click HERE to to support our work in the public square.

Politicians and pundits are making mincemeat of marriage, faith, and religious liberty.

Rumors are circulating that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago) and homosexual activist, State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) may call for a vote on the marriage redefinition bill (SB 10) next week. Because their ideological accomplices in the political and punditry spheres are promoting this effort with fervor and tenacity, it’s essential that Illinoisans understand the specious nature of the arguments that animate them. The Chicago Tribune once again provides a cornucopia of lousy — that is to say, false and destructive — ideas about marriage, ideas which, unfortunately, extend beyond the narrow boundaries of the Tribune and the narrow minds of newly installed Chicago Alderman Deb Mell, Tribune columnist Eric Zorn, and Governor Pat Quinn.

Lesbian activist Deb Mell’s recent Tribune commentary isn’t actually a rational argument for the redefinition of marriage. Rather, it’s an extended piece of demagoguery that embodies and conceals a troubling set of assumptions and an absurd conclusion. And it’s the only thing Mell’s got, so she repeats it ad nauseum.

To summarize her “argument”: She and her partner have been together for nine years, they own a home together, they do household chores together, they are raising a child together, they assume extended familial roles together, they attend a church that rejects orthodoxy together, they care for one another during illness, and they manage their finances together. Therefore, marriage has no inherent connection to sexual complementarity.

Yes, folks, that’s what passes for an argument in the alternate universe called “progressivism.” No attempt to define marriage. No attempt to justify why marriage is restricted to two people. No attempt to explain why platonic friends, siblings, or polyamorists — all of whom can do all the things listed above — should not have their unions legally recognized as marriages. No attempt to justify the deliberate denial of children’s inherent right to be raised by both a mother and father, preferably their own biological mother and father. No attempt to explain what the government interest is in inherently non-reproductive types of relationships.

While Mell replaces sound logic with appeals to emotion, Eric Zorn replaces it with ad hominem arguments and condescending dismissals, starting with calling business owners who make distinctions between right and wrong actions “intolerant.” To business owners like the Christian photographers who have been fined $6,637 for declining to photograph a lesbian commitment ceremony, Zorn offers these tolerant and compassionate responses: “Tough,” “Please,” “Yawn,” and “Then don’t open a business.”

Zorn believes that anyone who makes moral judgments with which he disagrees is intolerant. One wonders, would Zorn similarly malign a photographer who refused to photograph a commitment ceremony between a father and his 30 year-old consenting daughter? And let’s complicate the question by hypothesizing this refusal comes during a time when laws prohibiting incestuous acts between consenting adults have been repealed. After all, the government has no business in our bedrooms.

Out of either ignorance or dishonesty, Zorn fails to address the fact that the photographers did not decline to photograph homosexuals. They declined to photograph a homosexual ceremony. They were not discriminating against people. They were making legitimate ethical distinctions among types of activities—an inconvenient truth for “progressives.”

Zorn seems to believe that the ultimate arbiter of all matters moral is THE LAW. Yes, laws like the Illinois Human Rights Act, which was created by Left-leaning Illinois politicians in cahoots with homosexual activists, are the ultimate arbiters of moral truth. Regarding religious liberty, Zorn says:

“You want to open a business that serves the public? Then you can’t practice discrimination on the basis of…religion…sexual orientation and so on….The law [the IL Human Rights Act] doesn’t care what you think about customers in these protected categories.”

Zorn doesn’t seem to see his inconsistent application of both a principle and a law. He uses the law that prohibits discrimination based on “sexual orientation” and religion to compel business owners to engage in an activity that violates their religious beliefs.

Further, “sexual orientation” is merely a dishonest term concocted to disguise the fact that a condition constituted by subjective sexual desires and volitional sexual acts has no similarity to other protected categories. Zorn with unequivocal eagerness subordinates religious liberty to the newly minted sexual “rights” of homosexuals. Methinks there’s some rollicking grave-rolling roiling the cemeteries of our Founding Fathers.

Zorn harrumphs that the religious protections in the proposed marriage revision bill that protect the right of churches to refuse to solemnize homosexual “weddings” are all the protections conservative people of faith deserve. This exposes Zorn’s ignorance of what it means to be a Christian and what the First Amendment was intended to protect. The totality of the life of a Christian is informed by his or her faith. There is no distinction between the sacred and the secular spheres for true followers of Christ, a point Martin Luther King Jr. eloquently expressed in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail.”

Governor Quinn, who claims to be a Roman Catholic, reveals, like Zorn, a troubling measure of theological ignorance. Quinn defends his defiance of the teachings of the Catholic Church on marriage by stating that he is acting in accordance with his “conscience.” Zorn and Quinn share a strange and stunted view of faith, doctrine, and religious liberty. Zorn wants to keep religion out of the public square. Quinn wants to keep it out of the public square and his conscience.

IFI is extending an urgent plea to our readers to take a few moments to express your opposition to SB 10, the bill that will permit the government to recognize non-marital unions as marriages, will harm children, and will further undermine religious liberty. It’s not just homosexual activists in Illinois who are watching this vote. Homosexual activists and their ideological allies throughout the country are watching Illinois. So too are conservatives in other states in which marriage is now or soon will be under attack. Defeat of this bill will offer hope to them.

Take ACTION: Send an email or a fax to your state representative.  Encourage your him/her to uphold marriage, family and religious freedom in Illinois by voting against SB 10.  Then take a moment to call the Capitol switchboard at (217) 782-2000 and ask your state representative to vote NO to SB 10.

 Please help your Illinois Family Institute remain strong in this fight.  
Please, click HERE to contribute what you can today.

Thank you.

In a stunning public admission during a debate on the future of marriage in Illinois, the chief sponsor of SB 10, the proposed bill to legalize same-sex “marriage,” homosexual State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago) acknowledged that the bill does not provide religious liberty or conscience protections for individual Christian business owners. Further, it was clear that both he and homosexual Chicago Alderman Deb Mell (a former state representative and co-sponsor of of SB 10) oppose any such protections.

In the unfortunately titled “Marriage Equality” debate, sponsored by the Chicago Tribune, moderator Bruce Dold asked Harris about the absence of conscience protections in the bill:

Dold: The bill specifically protects churches, but it does not have any language about individual conscience…. Would the bill not have a better chance if it had an individual conscience protection in it?

Harris: [D]ecades ago when the Human Rights Act was passed, it said, we the people of Illinois have decided not to allow discrimination based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, veteran’s status in housing, employment, or public accommodations. The question of should we treat all of our citizens equally in all of those three areas has been answered. But also there are exemptions for religious institutions in the Human Rights Act. There’s also the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and specific language in this bill…that explicitly protects freedom of religion for those churches and denominations which do not want to consecrate same-sex marriages.”

Harris publicly admitted that this bill protects the religious liberty of only religious institutions, churches, and denominations—not individuals. It was clear that Harris has no desire or intent to include such protections.

That said, the inclusion of such protections would not make this a good bill. It would simply make it a less terrible bill.

Harris tried to claim that SB 10 poses no threat to religious liberty, but was challenged by both Robert Gilligan, Executive Director of the Catholic Conference of Illinois, and Peter Breen, Vice President and Senior Counsel with the Thomas More Society, who talked about the Illinois bed and breakfast owner who is being sued for his refusal to rent out his facility for a same-sex civil union ceremony  (read more HERE).

Mell, who earlier had claimed that warnings about future religious persecution were dishonest “scare tactics,” responded “But [the bed and breakfast] is a business that does business in the state of Illinois, and in Illinois, we don’t allow discrimination.” While claiming that warnings about loss of religious liberty were deceptive and false “scare tactics,” she vigorously defended this religious discrimination. She apparently didn’t notice her own contradiction.

Neither she nor Harris seemed to notice that while they obsess about Illinois’ prohibition of discrimination based on “sexual orientation,” they pay no attention to its prohibition of religious discrimination. They don’t care if the bed and breakfast owner is discriminated against because of his religious beliefs.

Former Georgetown University law professor and current EEOC Commissioner, lesbian activist Chai Feldblum has written that when same-sex marriage is legalized, conservative people of faith will lose religious rights. She argues that it’s a zero-sum game in which a gain in sexual rights for homosexuals will mean a loss of religious rights for conservative people of faith, which she finds justifiable. She, Mell, and Harris share the view that the sexual “rights” of homosexuals trump religious rights.

Harris cited the Illinois Human Rights Act as his justification for not protecting the rights of people of faith to refuse to use their labor and goods in the service of an event that violates their deeply held religious beliefs. Well, the Illinois Human Rights Act also prohibits discrimination based on religion; hence the conflict of which Chai Feldblum spoke. Harris finds discriminating based on religion tolerable and justifiable but not discrimination based on sexual predilection.

By the way, choosing not to participate in a same-sex “wedding” does not reflect discrimination against persons. It reflects discriminating among types of events. The elderly florist who is being sued by the state of Washington for her refusal to provide flowers for a same-sex “wedding” did not discriminate against a person. She made a judgment about an event. She had previously sold flowers to one of the homosexual partners. She served all people regardless of their sexual predilections, beliefs, sexual activities, or relationships. She just wouldn’t participate in an event that she (rightly) believes the God she serves abhors. She takes seriously Jesus’ command to “Render unto Caeser what is Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Prior to the debate, I had a conversation with one of the event planners in which I predicted Harris would refuse to answer the critical question regarding why marriage should remain a union of just two people. Dold twice asked, if marriage is a right, why should it be limited to two people? Twice Harris obstinately refused to answer.

It was an embarrassingly obvious and intellectually dishonest dodge. Harris tried to use the language of the current bill to deflect the question saying in essence that the bill’s language says nothing about plural unions. This is the same embarrassing dodge ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka used in a program on which both he and I were guests. Three times I asked him why marriage should be limited to two people, as he claimed it should be. Three times he awkwardly refused to answer.

It doesn’t take much intellectual wattage to understand that once the ideas that marriage is just about love and has nothing to do with sexual complementarity or reproductive potential are embedded in law, there remains no reason to restrict marriage to two people. The legalization of plural unions becomes not merely possible but inevitable.

Harris also said, “All families should be created equal,” to which I would have asked, “Even polyamorous families?”

And he said marriage law should “expand to reflect the reality of society,” to which I would have said, “But there exist polyamorous families in society.”

A few additional thoughts on the debate:

1. “Progressive” language police: At one point Mell attempted to compel Breen to use the term she wanted him to use for her partner (whom she “married” in Iowa). She attempted to compel him to use the term “wife.” She correctly insisted that “terminology is important.” But the law is not the ultimate arbiter of truth and reality. Compelling Breen to use the term “wife” would rob him of the right to use the term he wanted to use and believes reflects truth and reality. Conservatives have the ethical right and obligation to use the language they believe reflects truth and reality. Conceding terminology to the Left, as conservatives too often do, is not smart, not truthful, not helpful, and not compassionate.
   
   In reality, a wife is the spouse of a man (and each partner must actually be the sex they claim to be). No one is ethically obligated to participate rhetorically in any fiction the government has foolishly decided to join.

2. Media bias and the “equality” chimera: The importance of terminology is the reason I described the title of the debate, “Marriage Equality” as unfortunate. “Marriage Equality” embodies and reflects assent to “progressive” assumptions. Conservatives recognize that the notion of “equality” in this context is strategically effective non-sense.  Treating different things differently does not reflect unjust, unequal treatment. Equality demands we treat like things alike. When homosexual men and women say they are attracted only to persons of their same sex, they are acknowledging that men and women are fundamentally and significantly different. As such, a union composed of two people of the same sex is fundamentally and significantly different from a union of two people of opposite sexes. Society has no reason to treat them as if they are the same.
   
   
3. The connection between marriage and children: Both Mell and Harris talked about children deserving, in Mell’s words, “the label” of marriage. Inconsistencies abound. While homosexuals claim that marriage has no inherent connection to reproductive potential, they use arguments about children as justifications for the legal recognition of same-sex unions as marriage. This points to the fact that homosexuals are pursuing the acquisition of children, which necessarily means that in their view, children have no inherent, unalienable right to be raised by their biological parents. Homosexual couples are creating children who will be wholly unconnected to either their biological mother or father or both. In addition, they are creating intentionally motherless or fatherless children, which means homosexuals believe children have neither a right to be raised by both their mother and father, nor a right to be raised by a mother and father.
   
   The issue of children naturally and inevitably arises because marriage is centrally about the next generation. If marriage weren’t centrally about the procreation of children, if children weren’t procreated via sexual unions, there would be no such thing as marriage. The government has no more vested interest in recognizing inherentlysterile homosexual relationships as marriages than it does in recognizing platonic friendships as marriages. The government simply has no vested public interest in recognizing or affirming loving, inherently non-reproductive relationships. If it does, Harris and Mell need to explain what it is. And remember, they cannot include children in their answer, because the Left says marriage has no inherent connection to children (and by extension, their rights).
   
   If the government is compelled to recognize as marriage any loving relationship that involves the raising of children, then, for example, a grandmother and aunt who are raising the children of their deceased daughter/sister, should be permitted to marry.

4. Appeals to emotion and redefining marriage: Mell’s “arguments” amounted to little more than appeals to emotion: She really loves her partner. She and her partner have been together for nine years. Her partner has stuck with her through difficult times. Therefore, the government should legally recognize their relationship as a marriage.
   
   Say what? If marriage has an inherent nature, it doesn’t change simply because she and her partner wish it were different. Harris and Mell have concluded that because they are not attracted to people of the opposite sex, marriage has nothing inherently to do with sexual complementarity or reproductive potential.
   
   What’s interesting is that they don’t deny marriage has a nature that is inherent and immutable. They believe marriage is inherently and immutably constituted solely by the presence of love between two people. But then they can’t provide a single reason for their stubborn insistence that marriage is an inherently binary institution. Harris and Mell need to provide reasons for jettisoning sexual complementarity from the legal definition of marriage while retaining the less essential requirement regarding number of partners in a marriage. Simply asserting that marriage is a union of two people is not an argument.

5. Catholic Charities and religious discrimination: During the debate, a brief discussion arose about Catholic Charities being forced to drop out of the adoption business following the passage of Illinois’ civil union law—a change that Harris views as serving the “best interests” of children. Neither Harris nor Mell expressed concern about the clear presence of religious discrimination—something which deeply concerned Princeton University law professor Robert George. In a 2011 CNN debate among candidates running in the Republican primary, George asked the following question and in so doing, told congressmen and women what they should do:
   
   

   In Illinois, after passing a civil union bill, the state government decided to exclude certain religiously affiliated foster care and adoption agencies, including Catholic and Protestant agencies, because the agencies, in line with the teachings of their faith, cannot in conscience place children with same-sex partners.

   Now, at least half of Illinois’ foster and adoption funds come from the federal government. Should the federal government be subsidizing states that discriminate against Catholic and other religious adoption agencies? If a state legislature refuses to make funding available on equal terms to those providers who as a matter of conscience will not place children in same-sex homes, should federal legislation come in to protect the freedom of conscience of those religious providers?

There is no more critical legislation pending than SB 10. Despite what some lawmakers and pundits fecklessly claim, this issue is more important than even pension reform. The rights of children, parents, and people of faith are at risk.

Demonstrate that you care more about preserving marriage than the Left does in destroying it. Demonstrate your willingness to endure hardship and even persecution in the service of truth.

Please call your lawmaker, and please try to attend the Defend Marriage Rally in Springfield on Oct. 23. The Left will be marching on Oct. 22. 

Click HERE to make a donation to the Illinois Family Institute.

Lawmakers in the Illinois House, most if not all knowing little or nothing about medicine or disease, may be voting to legalize so-called marijuana as “medicine” in Illinois on Wednesday.

This bill allows a “qualified” patient to have 2.5 ounces of marijuana every 14 days (183 joints, 13 per day).  Even the most experienced user smokes an average of three or four joints a day, potentially allowing the surplus to be sold on the streets. Moreover, “medical” marijuana laws normalize marijuana use, which significantly decreases the perception of harm especially among adolescents and teens.

“The key to it is medical access, because once you have hundreds of thousands of people using marijuana under medical supervision the whole scam is going to be bought. Once there’s medical access…then we will get full legalization.” ~Richard Cowan, former director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send your state representative an email or a fax to tell him/her that you do not want marijuana sold in your neighborhood for any purpose.  You can also contact your lawmakers through the Capitol switchboard at (217) 782-2000.

Andrea G. Barthwell, MD, FASAM, recently spoke to a large assembled group at Moraine Valley Community College at a conference on the consequences of marijuana as medicine.  She made it perfectly clear, smoked marijuana does not meet the standards of modern medicine. There is no scientific research on marijuana’s effectiveness as a medicine, interactions with other drugs, and impact on pre-existing conditions. There are no studies on marijuana that can be used to establish safe dosing levels, frequency and duration of administration, route, or method of administration for any medical condition.

The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) lists marijuana as a Schedule I drug because it has no accepted medical value and has a high potential for addiction. There is no scientifically documented benefit for the use of crude marijuana for any medical purpose. In fact, crude smoked marijuana has been rejected by major reputable national medical associations in the country including the American Medical Association, the American Ophthalmic Association, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, and the American Cancer Society.

Take a moment now to let your state representative know that you want him/her to vote NO to HB 1, the “medical” pot bill.

Read more:

Why Marijuana Legalization Would Compromise Public Health and Public Safety

Medical Marijuana Poses Critical Concerns to Prevention

Doctors Supporting FDA Process for Medical Marijuana

Christian Medical & Dental Association Letter to Lawmakers on HB 1

 Click HERE to make a donation to the Illinois Family Institute.

Written by David E. Smith and Laurie Higgins

Our state lawmakers are returning to Springfield this week and are expected to debate the controversial proposal to redefine marriage, a change that would prove destructive to children, family, society, and religious liberty in Illinois.

Proponents of marriage re-definition are pulling out all the stops to get what they want during the lame duck session of the General Assembly (January 2-9). Despite the national budget crisis and the looming “fiscal cliff,” they have even pulled President Barack Obama into the debate hoping that his recent statements in favor of same-sex “marriage” will sway a few votes in Springfield.  You may remember that Obama’s views on marriage “evolved” just seven months ago. It is worth noting that President Obama has also issued multiple Mother’s Day and Father’s Day proclamations in which he extolled the critical value of both mothers and fathers in the lives of children, something denied by the legalization of same-sex “marriage.”

It is vital that your voices be heard by your state senators and representatives even if you believe they already support the historical definition of natural marriage. They are hearing from our opponents. They need to hear from you.

The silence and complacency demonstrated by far too many Illinoisans on issues related to homosexuality and children, including marriage, should be shocking. The tragedy is that it’s not. While the Left pushes their unholy agenda with tenacity and religious fervor, conservatives say and do virtually nothing out of fear and a woefully misguided notion of compassion. It’s long past time for conservatives to be as bold and tenacious in defense of marriage as the other side is in destroying it. Please take a few minutes today or tomorrow to send a message to Springfield:

Take ACTION:  1. Click HERE to email your state lawmakers today, urging them to uphold natural marriage and not to cave to the politically correct and culturally destructive groups that are intent on altering society’s definition and understanding of marriage. 

2. Pray that God would give wisdom to our state lawmakers.  Pray that God would convict the hearts of our lawmakers.  Pray that God would give courage to our lawmakers to do the right thing in the face of tremendous pressure to do otherwise. Pray that God would have mercy on the families of Illinois.

3. Write a Letter to the Editor of your local daily and weekly paper and their websites. These need to be written and submitted without delay from all corners of Illinois. Messages should be concise, no more than 150-250 words, but shorter is better. For help locating the contact information for a publication in your area, click HERE.

4. Ask your pastor to share this bulletin insert with the congregation. 

5. Share this message with family, friends and on social media.  Forward this email to like-minded contacts.  Ask them to also send emails and make calls.

Here are some talking points that may be helpful in crafting letters or talking to friends:

• Make the letter personal about you, your family, your children or someone important in your life who have been negatively affected by homosexuality.
• Those who identify as homosexual have the freedom to make lifetime commitments to whomever they wish. They have no right to redefine the institution of marriage for everyone else.
• Governments recognize the sexually complementary institution of marriage in order to protect the inherent rights and needs of children, which assures the continued health and stability of the country.
• Children have an inherent, inviolate right to know and be raised whenever possible by their biological parents, a right that is further undermined by homosexual marriage.
• If the government severs marriage from gender, sexual complementarity and procreative potential, there is no rational reason to prohibit plural marriage or incestuous marriage.
• Although subjective feelings of love are important to those choosing to marry, they are irrelevant to the government’s reasons for being involved in recognizing, regulating and promoting marriage.  The government is involved in marriage centrally to protect the rights and needs of children by securing the connection of children to their biological parents.
• Despite assurances of religious protections, people of faith will lose religious rights if same-sex “marriage” is legalized.
• The freedom to decide what our children and grandchildren are taught in schools will come under attack. Proponents of the normalization of homosexuality will vigorously push for even elementary school children to be taught about homosexuality via the topic of “diverse family structures” and “family diversity.”
• Despite what “progressives” say, legal prohibitions of same-sex “marriage” are not equivalent to bans on interracial marriage. First, homosexuality is not analogous to race.  Second, bans on interracial marriage introduced a criteria that was not essential to marriage: race. One’s race has nothing to do with the central defining feature of marriage: procreative potential. 
• Society does not create marriage; society merely recognizes a type of relationship that exists and predates the state.

Please don’t be deceived by the Left’s lie that homosexuals have the right to unilaterally jettison the central defining feature of marriage (i.e. sexual complementarity), or their lie that jettisoning sexual complementarity will not affect heterosexual marriage, or that redefining marriage will not harm children, or that being allowed to marry will make homosexual relationships more stable or sexually faithful.

There is no more significant legislative battle than the one over marriage. We must send a message to our legislators that some societal conventions and institutions embody timeless, immutable, objective truths. Sexually complementary marriage is one such institution, and it is the essential building block of every healthy society. We must  do everything within our power to protect and preserve it. Thank you!

Please forward this article to your family and friends in Illinois.

Over the Christmas weekend, you may have seen or heard the reports from the media  extolling the news that 260 clergy — mostly from the Chicago area — signed a petition in support of redefining marriage.  In response to this story, IFI’s Laurie Higgins had some very good quotes in a New York Times article, while I had a short quote in the WGN-TV report that aired four days ago.

It is important that we keep this “news” in perspective.  In the state of Illinois, there are over a thousand Roman Catholic churches, over a thousand Southern Baptist churches, more than 500 Missouri Synod Lutheran churches, and there are thousands of other churches of various denominations — including Reformed, EV Free, Nazarene, Assemblies of God, COGIC, Charismatic, Baptist, Eastern Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Seven Day Adventists, Pentecostal, Mennonite, Independent — all of whom officially and publicly acknowledge that God ordained marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and that sexual activity outside the bonds of natural marriage is sinful.

It is no surprise to learn that a tiny fraction of religious leaders would compromise, distort, and misuse the Word of God for the praise of man and/or to achieve a political goal.  Kara Wagner Sherer of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Chicago was quoted in the New York Times article saying, “It doesn’t have to be a faith issue… We understand our Scripture in a different way.”  That statement really says it all.  She is correct, their stand is not a faith issue.  Divorcing God from the equation and dismissing thousands of years of Christian teaching, thought and understanding reveals their motives as distinctly humanistic and political.

Despite the holiday season, our state lawmakers need to hear from us — in person, by phone or by email.  Proponents of marriage redefinition are engaged in a full-court press right now, and they are planning to use the upcoming lame duck session (January 2-8) to accomplish their goal.

This past Saturday morning, I spoke to a state lawmaker — a Democrat — who expressed to me his concern.  He has been receiving more calls and emails in favor of same-sex marriage than he has been receiving against it.  I explained to him that the vast majority of Illinoisans were busy with family, church, shopping, cooking and traveling.  I assured him that after the Christmas weekend, that opposition to redefining marriage would certainly ramp up.  

Please prove me right!

Take ACTION: Click HERE to email your state lawmakers today, urging them to uphold natural marriage and not to cave to the politically correct and culturally destructive groups who are intent on altering society’s understanding of marriage.  Be assured, your calls and emails are important!  Legislators take very seriously the letters and the numbers of calls they receive – particularly letters that are written by their constituents (as opposed to pre-written form letters.) 

THANK YOU!

P.S.  Would you consider helping meet our $20,000 end-of-year matching challenge? It is vital that we raise these critical funds so that we are able to go into next year to fight marriage redefinition and many other anti-family proposals. 

Any donation given or mailed by December 31st will go toward this matching challenge and will be fully tax-deductible, lowering your 2012 tax burden.

Click HERE to support IFI and have your donation doubled!

 To make a credit card donation over the phone, call the IFI office at (708) 781-9328.  You can also send a gift to P.O. Box 88848, Carol Stream, IL  60188.

Multiple media sources are cheerfully reporting that supporters of marriage-redefinition may try to pass their same-sex “marriage” bill during the lame duck session of the General Assembly next month (January 3-9).

State Representative Greg Harris (D-Chicago), who identifies as homosexual and is the chief sponsor of this anti-family legislation, used the lame duck session in 2010 to ram through a same-sex “civil unions” bill.  It passed by razor-thin margins in part because many proponents of civil unions dishonestly promised lawmakers that the legalization of “civil unions” was all they wanted. 

The ethically-challenged ACLU lobbied heavily for civil unions in 2010, but then in 2012 filed a lawsuit in Cook County on behalf of homosexual activists, complaining that the very civil union law they lobbied to create is unconstitutional.

The liberal activists who pushed for civil unions, including Representative Harris and State Senator David Koehler (D-Peoria), also promised their colleagues that religious liberty and freedom of conscience would not be affected by the passage of “civil unions.”  We have seen how empty those promises were. 

One month after the act was signed into law, homosexual activists went after the Christian owner of a bed and breakfast in Paxton, Illinois.  The owner, Jim Walder, wanted to operate his business for the glory of the Lord.  Not wanting to violate his conscience, Mr. Walder refused to rent his bed and breakfast to a homosexual couple for their civil union ceremony and reception.  (Read more HERE.)

Then in July of 2011, because Catholic Charities would not violate its religious convictions by placing needy children in the homes of homosexual “civil union” partners, the state of Illinois forced Catholic Charities out of adoption and foster care work, thereby affecting the lives of 2,500 innocent children.

The promises of homosexual activists turned out to be utter deceits, as were the religious liberty “guarantees” that were built into the civil union bill, ironically titled “The Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act.” 

Perhaps thinking Illinoisans can be duped again, Representative Harris has named his marriage-redefinition bill the “Religious Freedom and Marriage Act.”

Take ACTION: Click HERE to email your state lawmakers today, urging them to uphold natural marriage and to support a state constitutional amendment by allowing Illinois voters to permanently define this foundational societal institution.  Be assured, your calls and emails are important!  Legislators take very seriously the letters and the numbers of calls they receive — particularly letters that are written by their constituents (as opposed to pre-written form letters.)

We can stop this destructive policy from moving forward, but we must take up the fight again and be willing to make our voices heard.  And this time, we need every conservative in Illinois to make his and her voice heard. We need you to respond to every action alert we send out as the Left moves forward with this and other pernicious legislation.

Click HERE to support the work and ministry of IFI.

Illinois parents may soon begin to taste the diseased fruit of the Illinois “enumerated” anti-bullying act that Governor Quinn signed into law a year ago on the Sunday morning of the Chicago “gay pride” parade at a ceremony at Nettelhorst School, Chicago’s first public elementary school to march in the debauchery-affirmation parade, which is located in the city’s premier homosexual neighborhood “Boystown.” (And there are still gullible people who buy the deceit that this law is centrally about bullying.)

The term “enumerated” is an obfuscatory euphemism that means the law specifically includes homosexuality, Gender Identity Disorder, and cross-dressing. Of course our lawmakers wouldn’t dare use those terms out of fear that Illinoisans would see the pernicious truth lurking behind the civil rights argot. No, our lawmakers use the equally obfuscatory euphemisms of “sexual orientation,” “gender identity,” and “gender expression.”

This law required our State Superintendent of Education, Christopher Koch, to appoint a Task Force to make recommendations about the implementation of the anti-bullying law. Here are just a few of the “unbiased” Task Force members:

Christopher Koch: Illinois State Superintendent of Education, who according to the Chicago Tribune, lives with his “partner.” Other public sources (here and here) reveal that partner to be Kyle A. Lentz.

In 2009, Koch was honored by the homosexual activist organization, Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, as “advocate of the year.”

Rocco Claps: openly homosexual Director of the Department of Human Rights (Read more HERE).

Shannon Sullivan: openly homosexual Director of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance, who seeks to exploit all public schools — including elementary schools — to normalize her own sexual proclivities.

Jennifer Nielsen: Associate Director of the Anti-Defamation League (pictured here in the homosexual newspaper Windy City Times, promoting the pro-homosexual film It’s STILL Elementary. Trailers of this film can be viewed HERE).

Lonnie Nasatir: Regional Director of the Greater Chicago/Upper Midwest area with pro-homosexual Anti-Defamation League. Nasatir had this to say about the civil union law: “In our eyes this is an issue of pure and simple fairness and equality; we knew representative [Greg] Harris would need a lot of help and we thought it would be a great opportunity to inform the community about what the bill means and other issues about the LGBT community to be informed and educated citizens.”

And this: “Today we celebrate the hard work of advocates and legislators, and specifically Representative Greg Harris, who worked tirelessly on this bill for several years to ensure all citizens are afforded the rights and privileges of married couples…. This is a proud day for the state of Illinois as we have recognized a fundamental inequality and taken steps to remedy it.”

Dr. Stacey Horn: assistant professor in the College of Education, University of IL at Chicago (former academic home of Bill Ayers). In an article co-authored by Horn she writes, “A final LGBTQ school safety strategy involves…integrating LGBTQ topics into the school curricula.”

According to the UIC website, Horn is “interested in factors (e.g., age, religion, school context, intergroup context) related to sexual prejudice among adolescents and adults….In her teaching, she….also examines how to use our knowledge about adolescent development in creating educational and social context that support and promote positive developmental outcomes for all youth, and specifically for youth who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.”

Click here, here, and here for more on Horn.

Dorothy Espelage: Professor of Educational Psychology, College of Education, University of IL at Urbana-Champaign. HERE are some words of wisdom from Espelage: “Kids are bombarded by homophobic messages….The kids’ attitudes in this state are homophobic in nature. They marginalize boys who don’t act like boys and girls who don’t act like girls….This is very controversial….It’s tied to religion, it’s tied to values, and we’re a very sexually repressed nation as it is, anyway.”

Ann Rangos: self-identified lesbian high school student who is described by David Fischer of the Illinois Safe Schools Alliance as “an incredible activist.”

Sukari Stone: self-identified lesbian high school student who writes the following on her blog:

I’m extremely passionate about human rights. More specifically gay rights. I work with an orginization that helps make schools safer and more welcoming to LGBTQA students. Equal rights are very important to me. Probably one of the most important things in my life at the moment (and hopefully for awhile). I have serious pride in who I am and honestly don’t care whether others accept me or not. And because of my ridiculous pride I’ll let you in on a little secret of mine…I’m a rainbow kid. Get it? I like girls. Cool right? (Source)

I was thinking gay thoughts as usual)….I promise to try to cut down on the ridiculous about of gay things in my posts. I really can’t help it. Most people have 2 parts of their brain, a logical side and an artistic side. I actually have 3 parts; an artistic side, a logical side and a gay side. (Source)

After reading [“Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” by Jonathan Edwards], I honestly laughed. Seriously, this guy needs to be put away. I could just imagine a red-faced fat man screaming this sermon at the top of his lungs. “What’s his deal?” I asked myself.

What surprised me even more was the fact that people were so quick to believe this idiot. If they even read the Bible they’d know that the God portrayed in it was a good one. A loving caring and accepting one.

Personally, I am not religious. I don’t believe in God but I have read the Bible and studied religion a little bit. It’s just not my cup of tea. I could rant on and on about religion in general but I don’t want to ridiculously offend someone (for once in my life).

I think that Johnathan Edwards was trying to get his listeners to live a life of fear of paranoia. After all, if I believed that God was holding me by a string over a flaming pit I’d be pretty damn scared too. He’s using fear to force people to live their lives perfectly and not to make any mistakes. The God portrayed in the Bible was a forgiving guy so I’m not exactly sure what edition Edwards was reading. Maybe he knew that this wasn’t happening. That God was a hateful being that wanted to kill everyone. It could’ve been a pretty smart way to brainwash people into believing what you had to say.

Basically, Johnathan Edwards was either a ridiculously smart manipulator or a guy that was coming down from a serious acid trip while delivering his sermon. (Source)

Here are some of the recommendations made by the Koch-appointed Task Force (comments and questions in brackets are mine; all emphases are mine):

• education stakeholders in Illinois [should] commit to engaging in overall school transformation….To accomplish transformation, schools must:
• Recognize the impacts of systemic cultural issues such as racism, sexism, classism, adultism, disability discrimination andhomophobia that contribute to negative and hostile environments for youth and adults
• Provide effective youth programming with:
• Strong ties to theoretical constructs related to bullying…and behavioral change [Will any of the “theoretical constructs” used in “youth programming” dissent from liberal dogma regarding homosexuality and Gender Identity Disorder?]
• An evaluation component [Will students be evaluated? If so, on what will they be evaluated? Will they be evaluated on the degree to which they have embraced the moral assumptions of liberal demagogues?]
• Methods and strategies for adapting programs to unique school contexts (e.g., race, age, gender) and ecological domains (e.g., peer relationships, family relationships)
• Provide professional development to all school personnel (including not only administrators and teachers, but bus drivers, maintenance workers, security, cafeteria workers, etc.) on issues of:
• School-wide expectations, as well as reporting and monitoring requirements when expectations are not met
• Impacts of systemic cultural issues such as racism, sexism, classism, adultism, ableism and homophobia that contribute to bullying and school violence, as well as hostile environments for youth and adults that inhibit learning and development
• In order to support schools in the school transformation process, the Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) and other governmental agencies, where possible, should:
• Support amendment of the PSVA (the Illinois “enumerated” anti-bullying law) and implementing regulations to…cover all public and non-public schools, require more detail in mandated anti-bullying policies, and more effectively support school transformation efforts
• Develop two to four common indicators (e.g., incidence rates, discipline referrals related to bullying, overall school climate) that address bullying and school violence and require all schools and districts to report annually
• Establish an administrators’ academy to teach all school administrators ways to establish and maintain a positive school climate
• Make available quality technical assistance and professional development to schools engaged in the school transformation process
• Ensure all pre-professional education for school personnel prepare them to engage in and lead school transformation processes [“Pre-professional education” refers to students preparing to become teachers. In other words, the task force is recommending that all future teachers be indoctrinated with their subversive ideas about homosexuality.]
• Fully fund pilot projects to collect and evaluate data on the efficacy of the proposed school transformation model to comprehensively prevent and address bullying and school violence

Some random thoughts about this legislative debacle:

— It’s odd or ironic or hypocritical that an educational group that purports to embrace diversity and tolerance would apparently make no effort to create a diverse task force. It’s clear that the task force excluded anyone who opposes bullying but believes that affirming volitional homosexual acts harms children.

— It’s also odd that despite the fact that lesbians constitute less than 2% of the population, they comprise 100 percent of the student representation on the task force.

— According to research, the kids who are most frequently bullied are obese kids, and not one was included on the task force. In addition, I’ve never heard a single expert advocate the celebration and affirmation of obesity as a means to eradicate the bullying of obese students.

— I am loathe to refer, even indirectly, to particular students, but our state’s educational leaders have foolishly decided to make students public figures by including them on the task force. This reminds me of the equally foolish practice in District 113 of including students on committees that interview teacher candidates. Teacher candidates should be insulted by such a practice. However did we arrive at a cultural place where immature students who lack both knowledge and wisdom and who hold disordered moral beliefs serve on committees that make critical educational decisions for Illinois students? Clearly, Koch’s allegiance to homosexual kids is greater than his allegiance to conservative adults, sound pedagogy, or philosophical diversity. Perhaps he fears being accused of “adultism” if he doesn’t include students and “homophobia” if he doesn’t include homosexual students on the task force.

—Many conservatives fearfully, ignorantly, and, in some cases, self-righteously proclaim–at least publicly–that the homosexuality of educators and lawmakers doesn’t matter to them. Well, it better matter to them because when an educator or lawmaker affirms and embraces a homosexual identity, they are announcing precisely what they hold to be true about the nature and morality of volitional homosexual acts. And these non-factual assumptions about homosexuality will shape their decisions on a whole host of issues including laws, school policies, curricula, their own classroom comments, and professional development opportunities provided to school employees at public expense.

—How much will these complete “transformations” of all schools cost individual districts and the state?

It should be obvious that this anti-bullying law, like virtually all contemporary anti-bullying laws, policies, and activities, is centrally concerned with exploiting legitimate anti-bullying sentiment and public education to transform the moral beliefs of Illinois students. Part II of this article on Illinois’ “enumerated” anti-bullying law will focus on what community members can do in the hope of mitigating the law’s moral and pedagogical damage.

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