Cook County announces first domestic partners of 2006
Since we're talking about the definition of marriage today on Illinois Review, we thought it might be a good time to point out a special emphasis on the Cook County Clerk's Office website -- an announcement you may have missed a few weeks ago: Cook County's first same-sex couple to register their partnership with Cook County in 2006.
Drew McLeod and David DeBoer registered their same-sex domestic partnership on January 5. The two live in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood with their daughter.
And guess what?
To honor the occasion, the two received a night's stay at the Chicago Hilton and Towers, dinner at Caro Mio's and tickets to a Steppenwolf Theatre production.
Drew and David are the 775th same sex couple registered with Cook County since October 2003.
NOTE: The registry is not available to unmarried couples of the opposite sex.
Link: Cook County Clerk's Office News.
28 comments:
NOTE: The registry is not available to unmarried couples of the opposite sex.
Franny - Are you refering to Doug and Cathy "living in sin". I don't think they want to register.
I think the first hetero couple to apply for a marriage license this year were also given similar gifts: theater tickets, dinner, etc.
Nice touch isn't it? It's all donated too, so don't worry about public funds supporting treats for the first couples who apply.
Equal treatment -- what a concept.
Wow, your bigotry is getting so subtle! Your out-of-context factoid purports to demonstrate that gays and lesbians get "special rights," or in this case, "special treatment."
Wrong. And anyone presented with the proper context will be forced to conclude that the only thing that occurred here is that straight and gay couples were treated equally.
The news article on County Clerk David Orr's website IMMEDIATELY PRIOR to the release you quote from is entitled Orr issues first marriage license of 2006, and it contains this highly relevant paragraph:
The Clerk’s office paid the couple’s license fee and also gave the newlyweds donated gift certificates redeemable for: a weekend hotel stay at the Palmer House Hilton, dinner at Petterino’s, and a pair of tickets to a show at the Goodman Theatre.
Gasp! The straight couple and gay couple get virtually the same treatment! The horror! Clearly that straight couple's marriage is in serious danger because a gay couple registered their domestic partnership--an act that provides them none of the 1,000s of rights afforded to straight married couples in state and federal law.
I have additional words for you, Ms. Eaton, but to type them here would cause my entire post to be deleted for vulgarity. Use your fertile imagination.
Live and let live...I love how the right excuses Illegal wiretaps, but people want to live their own life in their homes and the right explodes...go figure.
Thanks for posting that Fran.
Congrats to the happy couple!
I don't have a problem with homosexuality in theory, but every gay person that I know has many types of social problems. It leads me to believe there is something wrong with their brains. I don't care what they do in their bedrooms, but I don't to have to deal with "Bobby Trendy" personalities.
Who gets to clean the sheets after? A straight person?
Um 1:42, there are plenty of straight people with social problems as well....just look at our jails.
Damn! Now my wife and I have to get divorced!
Thanks a lot Drew and David.
Anonymous said...
"Um 1:42, there are plenty of straight people with social problems as well....just look at our jails. "
Or the Bush Administration.
I don't have a problem with homosexuality in theory, but every gay person that I know has many types of social problems. It leads me to believe there is something wrong with their brains. I don't care what they do in their bedrooms, but I don't to have to deal with "Bobby Trendy" personalities.
I DO have a problem with bigotry in general, and every bigot that I know has many types of social problems, and begins their supposedly non-bigoted statements with "I don't have a problem, but...." It leads me to believe there is something wrong with their brains. I don't care what they do in their bedrooms, but I don't want them within 20,000 light years of me, my family, my friends, City Hall, Springfield, DC, or the planet Earth.
LOL....good point skeeter, I should have included that.
Who's the bigot now insider?
Wow, 2:19, that's some comeback! Accusing me of bigotry because I'm not willing to permit your bigotry to go unchallenged? A classic in pretzel logic. Frack off.
Gay rights is an issue that has reached its time, and is ultimately unstoppable, much like the black civil rights movement coming of age in 1950s and 1960s.
Just as segregationists found support through demogoguery in 1955, but are disgraced today, by 2026 we will look back on people like Fran and Peter LaBarbara as anachronistic bigots.
Frack off? Now that is a great comeback!
Thanks, I agree!
Oak Park created a civil registry some ten years ago if I recall right.
If you were a Village employee, registration got your partner coverage in the Villages Health plan.
Otherwise it was a strictly symbolic thing.
The sad thing was one women tried to sign up with her disabled adult child as her partner (or else it was the other way around) but the Village denied her that; and hence she couldn't get the partner into the health plan.
Same sex marriage a lot different then enslavement of African Americans. The nature of marriage has changed radically over the past few decades.
Again, the best book on the topic, and must read I think, is Koontz's Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage. Coontz a liberal but you finish her book feeling more conservative. The bast few decades have been disasters for the American Family.
The reality, is most of us will leave the majority of our lives, alone. That will have huge social consequences.
"Um 1:42, there are plenty of straight people with social problems as well....just look at our jails. "
5-10% of the population is in jail or less. 100% of gay people have social problems. They whine and bitch like little girls. They are just unhappy souls. Unless they are waiters, then they are excellent. They see good service as a moral imperative. I love gay servers. I dislike gay co-workers.
Well, well, well anon 6:58 - kudos on putting the thoughts of your side out there.
Well-reasoned and articulate. If only women and colored folk would stay home, we white men could get some things done...
Idiot.
Anon 11:58 AM the first post. Actually, Doug and Cathy are living in sin, but they are a same sex couple.
To say that gay marriage is equivalent of the end of slavery or the civil rights movement is not only comparing apples and oranges, it is offensive.
It is at least arguable that homosexuality, bisexuality, lesbian(ism), transsexual, and transgender (which is included in current law) is a behavioural and not an inherent biological trait. (I am waiting for the argument) But race is an inherent trait.
Even if sexuality (does that include pedophilia or bestaliaity??) is inherent and uncontrollable it is not necessarily obvious where race is obvious.
The GLBT or LGBT movement is not a poor nor oppressed movement. Most gays, at least those politically active are all WHITE, fairly well off, and live in good neighborhoods, in Chicago focused heavily in the 44, 46 and 48 wards although certain pockets in 43, 42, 47 and 32. So there is not an issue of income, job access, nor housing as was with African Americans or Hispanics even today.
There were many rich and powerful homosexuals even if they had to or for whatever reason hid their identity.
The science behind the idea that homosexuality is inherent biological trait that is unchangeable is controversal at best. Even though the American Psyhchiatric Association changed their distinction of homosexuality as a disorder it was more for political purposes than any real science. It is interesting that in "scientific" studies as well as ancedotal evidence that many (not all certainly) homosexuals had absent or weak father, strong or overbearing mother, and early psycho-sexual specifically homosexual development many times molestation. Many homosexuals were molested by other males and this at least could be a possible reason for their homosexual orientation.
Marriage as defines not only by Western Heritage and tradition (Judeo Christian, or Christian or Jewish--ancient Jewish polygamy notwithstanding) (as well as Islam, even Tibetan Buddhism although the Kundun was criticized for not being politically correct)--ALL cultures (besides some bisexual Pacific Islanders or ancient Greeks--some not all) Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Oriental, Confucius, Pagan/animist ALL have prohibitions on homosexuality even though in some form it may have been in all of human history for whatever psychological or biological reasons.
NOT ONE major culture or religion is accepting of homosexual behaviour even if tolerant of homosexuals as persons.
While Canada and some European nations now recognize same sex marriage, the history of marriage, with some ancedotal aberrations, NEVER had same sex marriage.
Marriage in this culture is defined, inherently, as heterosexual and preferably although not practically as permanent and monogamous at least in the ideal. If homosexuality is inherent and thus good and acceptable than what if promiscuity or polygamy or polyandry is also good and inherent and natural and only the Christian moals of today keep society from legalizing polygamy or polyandry. Maybe there should be no legal or even cultural restrictions on sexuality and whatever one desires as long as it is consentual (define consent and the Netherlands and Scandanavian countries have 14 or even no age of consent, the most sexually liberal and accepting of gay marriage and also with the highest levels of suicide and drug use and births out of wedlock) consent nothwithstanding, it seems that there is pansexual identity with no limits and those who want restrictions legally or even culturally or personally or for their children are puritan backwards ignoramouses who should be overruled.
To change the definition of marriage is not an easy nor simple thing and could very well be the domino effect on the social fabric of family and marriage that has already been so dramatically affected by industrialization, urbanization, and secularization.
Those who support gay marriage laugh that divorce is more significant and that how will gay marriage affect the happiness or permanancy of a heterosexual couple, but it does affect things in the long term and societal definitions and attitudes.
Gay marriage is a radical step that may open up a Pandora's box and the correlation (if not unproved cause) in the upcoming generations (you heard the predictions here) will be destructive for the family structure, that with it's many flaws, is the building block of our society and civilization.
10:43, that is the biggest load of horsesh*t pseudoscience I have ever read. I stopped counting at five logical fallacies (slippery slope, argumentum ad ignorantiam, sweeping generalization, red herring, straw man). Can you back up a SINGLE one of your ignorant statements?
Read Stephanie Stephanie Coontz. The pandoras box's been opened and hetero's did it. (google for her books).
The damage, I think, has been substantial.
Here's a letter from Coontz in the NYT. I'm not quick to dismiss the tradionalists because they have a better sense of what a mess we've gotten ourselves into... the we here meaning my baby boomer generation,
James Dobson of the evangelical group Focus on the Family has warned that without that ban, marriage as we have known it for 5,000 years will be overturned.
My research on marriage and family life seldom leads me to agree with Dr. Dobson, much less to accuse him of understatement. But in this case, Dr. Dobson's warnings come 30 years too late. Traditional marriage, with its 5,000-year history, has already been upended. Gays and lesbians, however, didn't spearhead that revolution: heterosexuals did.
Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked at the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.
The mess were in is way too many single mom families struggling to get by... the best solution for eliminating poverty is strong families.
I remember when Liberals like Pat Moynian could easily point that out.
Then again, crime has come down drastically since the 1970s (although this was largely due to abortion), so I really don't see that many more societal ills than at any other time in the past 100 years.
Bill, once again, you have it exactly backward: the best solution for strong families is eliminating poverty.
anon: 3:37...read Tony Blairs Faith Works speech,
Government can't raise your family. Government alone can't get you a job. Government on its own can't, from Whitehall, run the NHS properly, look after the sick and elderly, educate the children in the classroom, mind them when you are at work. Parliament by itself can't police the streets, give the alienated youngster a place to go or a place to play.
We can help do these things. Government can enable it, fund it, help or hinder those taking on the task. But increasingly, the ultimate difference has to be made by the creativity, ability, and dedication of those on the ground working in partnership with central and local government. I see examples of this partnership all about us: from work with disaffected teenagers and ex-offenders to the extraordinary dedication of the hospice movement and the churches who directly manage and inspire so many of our schools nationwide.
Sounds kind of 1960's Direct Action style to me except that it's people of faith most inclined to get off their tails and take action.
Insider 12:20 what specifically do you disagree with. Not that I agree but it is an interesting point.
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