The Civil Unions Act should be put asunder

Last week’s Wednesday Journal featured a special gay pride section celebrating Oak Park and Chicago area LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered) associations and services. This comes at a time when same-sex relationships are all over the news.

In May, the California Supreme Court ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by state voters in 2000, banning marriage between people of the same gender, was unconstitutional. Now, newspapers from sea to shining sea are featuring wedding photos showing happy California gay and lesbian newlyweds toasting one another with a bit of the bubbly.

Closer to home, according to a Wednesday Journal article, Illinois State Rep. Greg Harris (D-Chicago) is sponsoring HB 1826, the Illinois Civil Unions Act, which extends many of the legal rights and protections enjoyed by more traditional families, to opposite-sex, same sex, and senior couples. Considered a step down the slippery slope by pro-family advocates, and disdained by some in the LGBT community as codifying second-class citizenship, HB 1826 has been greeted by moderates from both sides as a welcome compromise, and is gathering support.

I, however, think the bill bears a closer look.

Gay pride may be tolerated, accepted, and even popular, in sophisticated circles of Chicago and in the People’s Republic of Oak Park, but it doesn’t, as they say, play in Peoria. Gay and lesbian people are absolutely correct to point out that they have a problem that is peculiar to them: In the vast majority of states of the union, they are legally prohibited from marrying their longstanding partners. Civil unions are one way to afford them certain legal rights and protections denied to them by law. Why then, should the bill include heterosexual couples who are free to marry? Expanding the pool of potential civil union applicants by including unmarried heterosexual couples and senior citizens in HB 1826 is a blatant attempt to garner support for what is basically gay rights legislation.

For the past 40-some years, many heterosexual couples have been claiming they do not want or need a piece of paper to prove their love. Fair enough! Other couples live together for years, hesitating to make a life-long commitment to another person, or perhaps to protect their assets. OK with me, if it’s OK with them.

Frankly though, if they reject the institution of marriage, for whatever reason, why on earth should they be afforded a cheap method to obtain some of the legal protections it provides? Still other couples may co-habitate because they have irregular marriage situations, perhaps spouses whom they never divorced. Will there be a system in place to ensure that these couples do not register a civil union? Talk about a disaster for everyone except lawyers!

Here’s a question. If the bill is written to protect unmarried homosexual and heterosexual couples, doesn’t it automatically include the silver-haired set, who shack up instead of marrying to protect their pensions and social security benefits?

Is Rep. Harris trying to create a third category of couples: those presumed too old to even contemplate sex, or perhaps those who are so old that the rest of us are grossed out at the very thought of them trying? Hasn’t the Honorable Mr. Harris seen the ads for erectile dysfunction potions?

On the surface, this seems like ageism at its very worst, but maybe the truth is more practical than prejudiced. Singling out seniors for inclusion in HB 1826 is clearly pandering to an influential group that enjoys greater public regard than gay and lesbians generally receive.

Harris would disagree, and claims that including seniors is not an “end-run” for getting the bill passed in Springfield. On the other hand, HB 1826 is most certainly an end run around the rules governing pensions and the laws which regulate social security benefits. I can understand why seniors choose not to marry. They wish to protect their assets for their children or their own retirement benefits for themselves. Seems to make perfect sense, but is it right to provide these same people with a legal loophole to get rights and protections that might come in handy, without having to shell out for a lawyer? The Illinois legislature should not be in the business of helping seniors subvert the intents of their pension plans, or circumvent social security policies that have been established at the federal level.

The public discussion should be limited to the true issue on the table. The question is whether citizens of the state of Illinois wish to provide a mechanism for gay and lesbian couples, who are presently prohibited by law from marrying, that would allow them some of the rights and privileges enjoyed by heterosexual married couples.

Citizens can consider this question, and its present alternative, which requires same-sex couples to seek legal solutions privately, and then make their wishes known in Springfield. HB 1826 deserves to die.