As gay marriage becomes an even hotter topic after California banned gay marriage and Connecticut recently legalized it, many wonder what this means for Illinois.

Josh Adair, graduate assistant in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Studies Program, said civil unions have a better chance of gaining mainstream appeal than gay marriage in Illinois.

“Civil unions are easier to sell,” Adair said. “With Obama [as president], it’s good steps toward making it more possible than it was a year ago.”

Adair also said the difference between a civil union and marriage is that marriage has a religious connotation while civil unions enable homosexual couples to have the same rights as heterosexual couples.

Curtis Valasek, community liaison for Prism of NIU, said gay unions would have higher support than gay marriage in Illinois.

“Even among strong Democratic communities, there are a pro-environment but not so many rainbow-rights Democrats,” Valasek said. “I think it might be a close call.”

Adair said gay marriage will be legalized on the east coast before it becomes law in the Midwest.

“I think it’ll happen on one of the coasts first, probably the east coast before it happens on the west coast or Midwest,” Adair said. “You have that pocket of states there, they are more open to gay marriage.”

Heather Morrissey, senior political science major, was disappointed that Proposition 8 banned gay marriage in California after it was recently voted on in the past election.

“When a state that already had gay marriage legalized and had many people thinking that they were no longer second-class citizens and could actually have the rights given to all the heterosexual couples of their state just yanked away because of bigoted people, it’s just really hard to take,” Morrissey said.

NIU Board of Trustee John Butler said a situation similar to California’s ban is not likely to happen in Illinois.

“Values initiatives such as Proposition 8 are used to invigorate the participation [of] voters that mainstream political actors wish to exploit to their practical advantage,” Butler said. “I can only hope Illinois citizens are smarter than to fall for such tactics.”

Butler also said NIU has a tradition of committing resources to study the cultural roles of society.

“[LGBT studies] provide intellectual interventions that, I know from first-hand experience, impact the opinions and intellectual commitments of students and the public served by NIU,” Butler said.

Adair said the LGBT studies program has members of the LGBT community as well as allies.

“It’s important that people want to study it [who are] outside the LGBT group,” Adair said. “It reaches different academic groups across campus.”

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