Under the measure, the definition of marriage in Illinois would change from an act between a man and a woman to one between two people. Civil unions could be converted to marriages within a year of the law going on the books. The legislation would not require religious organizations to perform a marriage of gay couples, and church officials would not be forced to allow their facilities to be used by gay couples seeking to marry.
Religious leaders opposed say the bill doesn’t go far enough to protect their rights. For example, they contend they might be forced to provide health insurance to an employee’s same-sex spouse.
OH MY GOD. ANARCHY. NOT THE HEALTH INSURANCE! THIS IS THE GREATEST INFRINGEMENT ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN OUR TIME!
Seriously, when you get to heaven St. Peter is like ticking off boxes, and sure, you’ve pillaged and burned your way through this world, hoarding riches and enabling the worst of what your society has to offer. But what will really seal your fate is that you were complicit in a homosexual relationship by paying an insurance compay so a person you will likely never meet can see a doctor!
I do not get the health insurance obsession. I don’t get the “courts will force us to marry gays, who naturally want to be married in places that despise them, because that’s how humans totally work” thing either, but that at least had some direct bearing on the daily operations of a religious institution. That fear has been assuaged, so now we’re on to a nitpick of allowing religious institutions to explicitly punish and exclude people for reasons that have nothing to do with doctrine. This is just using a tiny thing to bludgeon sexual compliance out of people.
Which a) Il Papa himself has said lately is total bullshit, in case the Illinois Catholic Conference is still paying attention to what that hippie in Rome thinks and b) DOESN’T WORK HAS NEVER WORKED WILL NEVER WORK. You wanna drive people back into the closet, okay. But they’re still going to be having sex in there. You’re not winning anything.
Plus, getting back to your lawyer’s defense up at the pearly gates, can’t you just confess your sin of enabling the health care of gay people, and beg forgiveness? Isn’t that how it works for immoral thoughts and abortions and protecting child molesters?
A.
Since you aren’t required to employ a gay person how can it matter whether you would be required to provide benefits for a same sex spouse? The law doesn’t prevent you from excercising your bigotry at all–but it does prevent you from exercising your bigotry and also extracting value from a gay person without proper recompense. If you are willing to pay a gay person a salary for performing X job then you are already “condoning” their marriage and their children and their gayness. What difference does health care make in that equation? What other goods, services, and emoluments can you withhold from gay people who work for you? Do you have a gay typist and you pay her salary but she can’t help herself to the coffee from the shared coffee pot?
These people are just evil. Evil and illogical. Evil and illogical and mean. Ok, let me start again. These people are evil, illogical, and mean.
Teatards live in fear of being made to turn their head and cough. “Ramming it down the throat” is always the first choice of words in these matters. Thus, healthcare is exactly equivalent to you raping them. Or something.
“I have no problem with gay people, I just want them put into camps.”
@aimai – Actually, there are a large number of states (Illinois is on the list) where it is illegal to make hiring or firing decisions based on someone’s sexual orientation. You’d have to come up with some other reason other than homophobia to make your hiring decision, which I’m sure is already pissing all the religious assholes off. No, you don’t have to give a gay person a job, but you have to have some reason other than “ew ghey”.