Religious Freedom and Civil Union Bill – What an empowering event it was on Wednesday, April 18 to take part in democracy in action at our Illinois state capitol in Springfield. A group of 5 Log Cabin Illinois members met early in the day in the Capitol cafeteria to strategize, plan out the schedule and divide up responsibilities. Three of the five had been up until 12:30 am the night before to put together the very comprehensive packets of materials to hand out to the state senators and representatives the next morning.
The five of us started out together by going to visit our host for the morning, Senator Christine Radogno. She had contacted several senators to come to her office at 9:30 am and visit with us so that we could tell them what we thought about the civil equality legislation now making its way into the state House. The Senators were very attentive and even asked several good questions.
We then left about a dozen packets of our materials so that Senator Radogno’s assistant, Tara, could hand them out to some of the Senators that couldn’t make it there to see us.
Then we moved our “operations” to the House side. We visited as a 5 person group for about an hour and only reached 6 legislators, because eash one was so interested in hearing our information and asking us questions about the HB1826. After the meeting with the sixth legislators, we decided to split up in order to be able to personally see each representative who had voted in favor of adding “sexual orientation” to the Illinois Human Rights Bill in 2005. This worked well and everyone went their separate ways with lobby packets in hand. After an hour of personally seeing all the legislators we wanted to see plus a few more, we met up with the Equality Illinois people who were finishing their lunch and then were going to go do their own lobbying.
Several Log Cabin Republican members had taken the Equality Illinois busses down to Springfield that morning, so they met up with us at that point and then we went out to disperse the rest of the Log Cabin Lobby Day packets.
After we were finished with this, I went up to the House Chambers to help several of our members to speak to call their representatives out of session in order to speak to them about HB1826. Our members truly brought a passionate entreaty to their Representative and basically told them what it means for them that the rep vote for the bill. I was able to help them with some of the more technical information while talking to their reps, such as “no GOP legislator who has voted for inclusive and civil equality legislation has lost their re-election bids in the last two election cycles”. I was also able to help point out some Illinois poll and survey numbers that prove the point that a vote for civil equality will not hurt the legislator on election day. Our reps really responded to this information and asked us some more questions. The biggest statement we heard from all the reps, both Republican and Democrat alike, was “we really need to hear from our constituents on this issue”, and “we haven’t been educated on these issues from the LGBT proponents yet”.
Well, folks, the time is now and the place is here to write a letter to your legislators to let them know you need them to vote for HB1826. Take a look at the “Talking Point” section on the www.logcabinchicago.org website and go to the “Take Action” button write a letter to your legislator. They have asked, they need and they want your input!
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