Ten male members of an anti-gay
marriage group from Pennsylvania on Friday arrived in Illinois to
protest the state's civil unions law, the
Daily Herald reported.
Lawmakers in December approved the law
that recognizes gay and lesbian couples with civil unions. And
couples began tying the knot on June 1. The bulk of licenses have
been issued in Chicago, the nation's third largest city, and its
surrounding counties.
Waving banners that read “God's
Marriage = 1 Man & 1 Woman” and “Honk for Traditional
Marriage,” the protesters from the Christian conservative group the
American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property
(TFP) demonstrated at the intersection of Rand and Dundee Roads in
Palatine, a suburb of Chicago.
“We believe that family values are
undermined by same-sex marriage,” John Ritchie, the student action
director for the TFP, told the paper. “Same sex violates God's
laws, nature's law and deliberately deprives children of either a
mother or father.”
Ritchie said that with the exception of
a doughnut being thrown at the group, reaction had been positive.
Opponents of the law have also launched
a petition drive to put the law up for a vote. The Illinois
Defense of Marriage Initiative needs half-a-million signatures to put a proposed state constitutional ban on gay marriage and similar
unions on the 2012 ballot.