A Chicago man on Monday was arrested
and charged with making threatening phone calls to Illinois State
Rep. Jeanne Ives, an opponent of gay marriage.
On Friday, Ives, a freshman Republican,
said that a man “called her office multiple times and made negative
personal comments and threatening remarks.”
Stephen S. Bona, 49, was charged with
disorderly conduct. The charges were upgraded on Monday following a
second threatening phone call to Ives' office. Bona now faces a
charge of threatening a public official, a Class 3 felony in
Illinois.
Bona was taken into custody on Monday
by Wheaton police, a Chicago suburb located in Ives' district. He
later posted bond and was released, according to MyFoxChicago.com.
Last month, Ives faced criticism when
she described gay relationships as “completely disordered.”
“What they're trying to do is not
just redefine marriage; they're trying to redefine society,” Ives
said during a radio interview with the Catholic Conference of
Illinois. “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.”