" In Illinois, a Senate Committee voted 8-5 late Thursday for a gay-marriage bill, but then delayed a full-floor vote. There may not be action on it for weeks.
Brown scoffed. "If she had the votes, there would have been a floor vote," he said. "They called off the session. This is a major victory for supporters of traditional marriage.".
Still, his group isn't taking any chances. It vowed to form a state political action committee and spend $250,000 to defeat Republican lawmakers who vote for gay marriage in Illinois, crowing that it helped defeat four GOP state senators who supported the bill that passed in New York.
Nine states, accounting for 15.8 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Human Rights Campaign, have approved gay marriage. A total of 38 states have either a state law or constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
States still up for grabs include New Jersey, where the Legislature approved same-sex marriage and Republican Gov. Chris Christie vetoed it, and where a lawsuit that would force recognition of gay marriage is still pending. Before the debate in the Garden State is resolved, the Supreme Court will probably have ruled on the two cases it agreed last month to take up. It will hear a challenge to the federal law known as DOMA, which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples, and the challenge to Proposition 8, the voter initiative that banned gay marriage and was overturned by state courts.
I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn't deny them the opportunity to get married.Well-intentioned people can disagree on the question of marriage for gay couples, and maintaining religious freedom is as important as pursuing civil marriage rights. For example, I believe that no law should force religious institutions to perform weddings or recognize marriages they don't approve of.