National Geographic

"The Catholic Church has often affirmed that here is no 'right to adopt.' It is a privilege and responsibility to be granted only to those married couples who can demonstrate, through their loving, permanent commitment to each other, their ability to make a lifetime commitment to raising a child in the best environment possible. May God bless these shepherds, their flocks and their work, and continue to grant them strength as they weather the storm which will certainly follow their bold leadership. We gladly welcome this clear, public stance for truth, religious freedom, and for children." - Monsignor Ignacio Barreiro, congratulating Illinois' Catholic bishops for their lawsuit demanding exemption from anti-discrimination laws.

Two more Catholic adoption agencies in Illinois have decided to close their doors rather than comply with the state's new civil unions law. They'd rather see children go without families. 



Glenn Van Cura, executive director of Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Joliet, told The Advocate that his office is not accepting applications for new foster care or adoptive parents pending further clarification from the governor and attorney general's office. "What we want to make clear is that according to our beliefs, with any cohabitating couple, whether homosexual or heterosexual, we don't refer to licensing. It's just part of our social teaching," Van Cura said. Single individuals, whether gay or straight, have been eligible to become foster or adoptive parents, however. "We don't ask, nor is it any of our business," Van Cura said of a single applicant's sexual orientation. In a letter this week to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, Catholic Charities of Peoria CEO Tricia C. Fox wrote that the suspension could be lifted if the state amended the civil unions law to allow religious services to refer same-sex couples elsewhere.

"The so-called Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Union Act has already done more harm to religious freedom than good. The Roman Catholic diocese in Rockford has announced that it will close its doors on the church's adoption program before subjecting children to placement in homosexual homes. Like it did in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., the Catholic Church refused to violate its convictions. Unfortunately, it's only a matter of time before other dioceses follow suit. For the church, this is an act of self-defense. Without a religious exemption, the law makes programs like this one vulnerable to lawsuits or state budget cuts. Much to the frustration of the bill's own sponsor, the state refused to carve out special protections for the religious organizations like this one. And now the state's neediest children will be paying for it." - Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council.

"Homosexual behavior is always wrong, according to vast scope of Judeo-Christian history, so it is tragic to behold the State of Illinois – or any government entity – recognizing immoral same-sex relationships and treating them like marriage. Moreover, for the City of Chicago and Gov. Pat Quinn to celebrate homosexuality with a mass Civil Union ceremony June 2nd is an act of hubris and defiance toward the Creator that mocks His wonderful plan for real marriage – the sacred union of a man and a woman to produce children and family. The pandering Quinn – epitomizing the modern Democratic politician –mocks his own professed Catholicism by working tirelessly to undermine its clear moral dictates. The anti-Christian Civil Unions law must be repealed." - Porno Pete LaBarbera, who has launched a petition campaign to ban all LGBT relationship recognitions in Illinois.

Today Illinois becomes the sixth state with legalized civil unions.

Long lines are expected to form early Wednesday at the Cook County Clerk's downtown office of vital records as couples from across Chicago gather to be part of a historic moment — the issuing of the state's first civil union licenses. The doors will open at 7:30 a.m. and the clerk's office will celebrate what it calls "the momentous occasion" by awarding a special gift package to the first couple to get a license. Adding to the festive atmosphere, about 20 local businesses will be supplying gifts that will be raffled off to other couples in line. As with marriage licenses, couples will have to pay a $35 fee and wait one day before they can hold a civil union ceremony. Couples who are already registered as domestic partners in Cook County but want to enter into a civil union will get a $20 discount and their domestic partnership will be automatically dissolved.

Civil unions laws in Hawaii and Delaware have not yet gone into effect.

The red-caped loons were there!

Porno Pete LaBarbera and his merry band of KKKloset Kases staged an anti-gay marriage rally in downtown Chicago yesterday.

Opponents of the new law that will allow same-sex civil unions rallied at the Thompson Center today demanding that Illinois voters be allowed to decide the fate of the issue through referendum. Days before a measure that will give gay couples the same state rights as a married man and wife is set to take effect, opponents and supporters faced off. As busloads of protesters crowded in front of St. Peter’s Church in downtown Chicago, a counter demonstration took form on the other side of the 100 block of West Madison Street. “There’s a battle between gay rights and religious freedom,” said Peter LaBarbera, president of the group Americans for Truth, as he coached people on how to correctly complete the signature sheets on which opponents hope to collect the required 300,000 signatures. “We want to give Illinois votes the same opportunity other states have had.”

More photos can be found at the Flickr account of Chicago Man.

The first action from Porno Pete's latest hate group will be an anti-civil unions protest today in downtown Chicago. LaBarbera is once again trying to place a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on the Illinois ballot, something he laughably failed at in 2006 due to "questionable" petition signatures.

IDMI is a statewide effort to preservee the historic, traditional definition of marriaeg in the Land of Lincoln. IDMI needs to gather almost 300,000 signatures of registered Illinois voters by next April 2012 – to put an Advisory Question on the 2012 ballot asking the Illinois General Assembly to pass a Constitutional Amendment stating: “To secure and preserve the benefits of marriage for our society and for future generations of children, the union of one man and one woman in marriage shall be the only agreement recognized as a marriage or similar union for any purpose.”

To accomplish this goal – and have Illinois join the 31 other states whose citizens have stood up for real marriage at the ballot box – we aim to gather 600,000 signatures by next year. This could help us avoid an expensive legal challenge by homosexual activists and the ACLU – who will go to any extreme to deny Illinois voters an opportunity to have their voices heard on traditional marriage.

Catholic Charities of Rockford, Illinois announced yesterday that they will suspend all foster care and adoption services rather than comply with the state's new civil unions law.

Officials cited a lack of clarity in the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Act, which does not specify whether religious child welfare agencies must place children with couples in civil unions. Without a specific provision protecting religious agencies, church officials said, the agency can't risk losing state contracts or facing lawsuits if it turns away gay couples or others in civil unions. State funds make up about half of Catholic Charities of Rockford's $7.5 million operating budget.

"While we understand leaving this work will be very painful for our client families, employees, volunteers, donors and prayerful supporters, we can no longer contract with the state of Illinois whose laws would force us to participate in activity offensive to the moral teachings of the church — teachings which compel us to do this work in the first place," said Frank Vonch, director of social services for the Diocese of Rockford, which includes Kane and McHenry counties.

Catholic adoption agencies in other Illinois cities say they have not yet decided whether to stay open.

Good As You tips us that the Illinois Defense of Marriage Initiative is fighting against the "proponents of communism and fascism" who want to "control the lives of the Free World" through their "unGodly behavior." OK, then.

Catholic Charities of Peoria, Illinois says that it will continue to deny its adoption services to gay people despite the recent failure of a bill that would have exempted them from anti-discrimination laws. Civil unions go into effect in Illinois on June 1st.

"The Catholic Church is not going to be OK with Catholic Charities processing applications from anyone in a civil union," said Trish Fox, who runs Catholic Charities of Peoria. "And all we're asking is that we can continue what we've always done, which is refer cohabitating couples, heterosexual or homosexual, to another agency."

The group says they'll close their doors before complying with the law. Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue offers his congratulations.

Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Peoria does not discriminate between heterosexuals or homosexuals. It simply defends the institution of marriage. Heterosexual men and women who cohabit are no different from homosexual couples who live together: neither are married and both are therefore disqualified from receiving the sponsorship of Catholic adoption services. They can go elsewhere, and are indeed advised of alternative services by Catholic Charities. But no one has a right to demand that a religion forfeit its doctrinal prerogatives by bowing to the secular creed of the state in matters of marriage and the family. Those who truly believe in diversity will respect the plea for pluralism made by Catholic Charities. If separation of church and state means anything, it means the right of religious bodies to practice their faith without state encroachment.

Except, of course, when religious bodies receive massive public assistance.

Illinois Republicans have quietly added an anti-gay adoption amendment into a bill to assist the blind. Windy City Times reports:

An amendment to a proposed bill in the Illinois Senate states that "a child welfare agency that is religiously based or owned by, operated by, or affiliated with a bona fide religious organization may decline an adoption or foster family home application … from a party to a civil union if acceptance of that application would constitute a violation of the organization's sincerely held religious beliefs." SB 1123, the bill including this amendment No. 65, means that unmarried straight or gay couples in civil unions who do not share the religious values or faith of the organization could be denied the chance to adopt or be foster parents.

The Human Rights Campaign reacts:

“With so many children in the foster care system who need a loving home, it is unfathomable that lawmakers would add an amendment to a bill limiting the number of families available to them,” said HRC Family Project Director Ellen Kahn. “Child welfare experts agree that adoptive parents should be judged by their character and their ability to raise a child, not on their sexual orientation. The fact that lawmakers tried to hide this amendment within a bill that has nothing to do with adoption suggests that even they know it’s not in the best interest of Illinois’ children.”

The Seventh Court of Appeals has upheld a lower court's ruling against an Illinois woman who sued Wal-Mart for religious discrimination. According to the woman, she has a God-given right to scream anti-gay epithets at her coworkers. Gay City News reports:

According to the unsigned ruling, Tanisha Matthews, who describes herself as an Apostolic Christian, worked as an overnight stocker at a Wal-Mart store in Joliet, Illinois. While on a break, she took part in a heated conversation with other employees about God and homosexuality. Another employee who participated reported to management that Matthews was "screaming over her" that God does not accept gays, they should not "be on earth," and they will "go to hell" because they are not "right in the head." During a company investigation of the incident, five other employees confirmed that Matthews said gays are sinners who are going to hell. Wal-Mart managers considered these remarks to be "serious harassment" in violation of the company's "Zero Tolerance" harassment policy, which bars any conduct that could be interpreted as harassment on the basis of categories that include sexual orientation. Serious harassment is considered "gross misconduct" that is grounds for dismissal.

The ruling observes: "If Matthews is arguing that Wal-Mart must permit her to admonish gays at work to accommodate her religion, the claim fails. Wal-Mart fired her because she violated company policy when she harassed a co-worker, not because of her beliefs, and employers need not relieve workers from complying with neutral workplace rules as a religious accommodation if it would create an undue hardship." The above-linked article notes that Christian legal groups have been ramping up claims of the right to proselytize in the workplace. Courts, so far, have largely disagreed.

Read the entire ruling.

The same group whose anti-abortion billboard was yanked in Soho is posting thirty of the above billboards around Chicago's black neighborhoods. Think Progress reports:

As the Guttmacher Institute notes, these groups are “exploiting and distorting” the fact that “the abortion rate for black women is almost five times that for white women” to falsely blame the “aggressive marketing by abortion providers to minority communities.” In reality, the higher abortion rate reflects higher rate of unintended pregnanices resulting from wider disparities in geographic and financial access to health services — most notably “being able to afford the more effective — usually more expensive — prescription methods.” These obstacles, ironically, are what Planned Parenthood actively seeks to remove.

JMG reader Patrick writes: "I just happened across the old Protect Marriage Illinois website, (the one set up by the Illinois Family Institute a few years back when they unsuccessfully tried to get a marriage referendum on the ballot), and after years of inactivity, it's currently displaying a message stating that a 'Citizen Petitions to Protect Marriage in Illinois' is coming soon, with the Americans for Truth email as a contact."

It was Porno Pete who in 2006 spearheaded the failed attempt to gather 500,000 signatures to put a ban on same-sex marriage on the state ballot. That was when he was president of the SPLC-certified hate group, IFI. It's hard to say whether this latest attempt could be any more successful, but these days, who knows? I'm sure Equality Illinois is watching this.

Porno Pete is asking his followers to send in proof of "pro-homosexuality propaganda" in public schools, using the above display from an Illinois high school as an example.

Each pro-homosexual law makes it easier for school administrators and teachers to allow the one-sided promotion of homosexuality in their school, as occurred recently at Lyons Township High School in LaGrange, Illinois (see photo). The state’s Democrat-dominated General Assembly passed a “Civil Unions” bill in a lame-duck session last year (before a new elected, more conservative legislature could take office) — and Gov. Pat Quinn (D) signed it into law January 31. (The bill, which also allows heterosexual “civil unions,” thus further undermining marriage, takes effect June 1.) America’s public schools are becoming de facto ”Homosexuality-Promotion Zones” — directly undermining the authority of parents to guide their children’s moral upbringing — and subjecting Christian and moral-minded students to one-sided pro-homosexuality propaganda like the above.

According to a letter LaBarbera posts today, local wingnuts may attempt to remove school board officials over the above display.

"In Great Britain, Christians are now effectively second-class citizens, judged 'unfit' to care for foster children. If they are unfit to foster children, logically they are also unfit to adopt, and possibly as one British lawyer suggested to the press, unfit to parent their own children, too. Could it happen over here? Yes. We see the first steps of the muscular liberalism process at work already in the state of Illinois, in its probe of evangelical, Lutheran and Catholic foster-care agencies for discrimination against gay couples in foster care.

"For the ACLU and the gay rights community, suddenly the right to live as we choose isn't good enough. Any foster-care agency that does not place children with gay couples now must be discriminated against by the government in the name of anti-discrimination. The ACLU claims that legally requiring foster-care agencies to be inclusive would expand resources to help 16,000 kids currently in the Illinois foster-care system. This is just Orwellian doubletalk. The new 'inclusive' policy would exclude three religious foster-care agencies from recruiting parents. This cannot possibly expand resources available to needy kids." - NOM founder Maggie Gallagher, writing for Yahoo! News.

Yesterday Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn signed the bill abolishing the death penalty in his state and commuting the sentences of prisoners on death row. Today Amnesty International updated their above map, which is interactive on their site. Among the 35 states still making executions, Texas has almost five times more prisoners on death row than the number two state, Virginia.