The 50 Spot: Marriage, Civil Union Legislation in the Midwest

All eyes have been on California this week, but the world around us keeps spinning.  Yesterday, two Midwest states moved forward with legislation recognizing full marriage equality and civil unions.  And deep in the heart of Texas, Equality Texas had their largest lobby day to date with state legislators earlier this week.  Awesome.  This movement is so much bigger than we're given credit for by mainstream media folks and politicos.

Minnesota: State Senator Scott Dibble (who I had the privilege of meeting many times when I worked on Sen. Paul Wellstone's 2002 campaign) introduced a bill in Minnesota yesterday that would create gender-neutral marriage laws in the land of 10,000 lakes, and would language in current state law that prohibits same-sex marriages.  The bill complements a piece of legislation introduced in the Minnesota House earlier this year, which would also legalize same-sex marriage.  Dibble's bill has been sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and will likely have a hearing scheduled on it in the coming weeks/months.

Illinois: In a 5-4 vote, an Illinois House Committee voted to send civil unions legislation to the floor of the State House.  The bill, technically known as House Bill 2234 or the Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act, will give same-sex couples the same legal obligations, responsibilities, protections, and benefits afforded to heterosexual married couples.  According to Geoffrey Stone over at HuffPost: "Every public opinion poll in recent years shows that a substantial majority of Americans favors the recognition civil unions (if not same-sex marriage). Indeed, a compilation of a dozen such polls, ranging from Fox News, to Gallup, to Newsweek, to CBS, to ABC/Washington Post, to Quinnipiac, reveals that Americans favor the legal recognition of civil unions by an overwhelming 60% to 34%."  Still, the bill in Illinois won't go without its detractors, including the Mormon Church, which has started to organize around defeating civil unions in Illinois.  It worked for them in California to lash out against equal rights, and now the institutional Mormon Church is at it again in Illinois.

Texas: We should have mentioned this earlier in the week, but on Monday, Equality Texas had a lobby day in Austin with state legislators to push for pro-equality legislation.  More than 400 people showed up, giving Equality Texas its largest lobby day to date.  Equality Texas' Executive Director Paul Scott told the Dallas Voice that he sees a climate change in the way LGBT rights are being seen by Texas lawmakers, and Jeanne Rubin (a member of the Collin County Gay and Lesbian Alliance) told the Voice that her goal was to make it impossible for her representatives to claim they don’t have any LGBT constituents.  I think she (and the hundreds of others who participated in the lobby day) succeeded on that front by leaps and bounds!