Illinois State Rep. Jeanne Ives is
being criticized for saying that a push to legalize gay marriage in
Illinois is an attempt by gay and lesbian couples to “weasel their
way into acceptability.”
Ives, a freshman Republican lawmaker,
made her remarks during a radio interview with the Catholic
Conference of Illinois.
“I didn't go down there to talk about
same-sex marriage,” Ives
said. “They're trying to redefine marriage. It's a completely
disordered relationship and when you have a disordered relationship,
you don't ever get order out of that. So I'm more than happy to take
a 'no' vote on the issue of homosexual marriage.”
“What they're trying to do is not
just redefine marriage, they're trying to redefine society. They're
trying to weasel their way into acceptability so that they can then
start to push their agenda down into the schools, because this gives
them some sort of legitimacy. And we can't allow that to happen. …
It's the natural right of the child to be with both parents, either
in an adoptive nature or in a biological nature. To not have a
mother and a father is really a disordered state for a child to grow
up in and it really makes that child an object of desire rather than
the result of a matrimony.”
State Rep. Greg Harris, the openly gay
Democrat sponsoring the marriage bill in the House, called Ive's
comments “unfortunate.”
“I think those remarks were
unfortunate,” he
said. “We should be supporting families and commitment, not
disparaging them.”
(Relate: Illinois
House Speaker Michael Madigan says gay marriage bill 12 votes shy.)