Civil Unions
Representative Greg Harris introduced the Illinois Religious Freedom Protection and Civil Unions Bill on February 23, 2007. It aimed to make the creation, benefits, and dissolution of civil unions essentially identical to marriage. The bill was not brought to a vote before the full House. On February 18, 2009, Harris re-introduced the civil union bill, which was reported out of committee following a 4–3 vote along party lines, with Democrats in support and Republicans opposed, but died on the floor. Instead of proceeding with that bill, Harris's committee substituted the language for that in a bill already before the committee on May 26, 2009. On November 30, 2010, the House passed the bill by a vote of 61–52. The Senate approved it on December 1 by a vote of 32–24. Governor Pat Quinn signed the legislation on January 31, 2011, and it went into effect on June 1, 2011.
Read more about this topic: Recognition Of Same-sex Unions In Illinois
Famous quotes containing the words civil and/or unions:
“Virtue and vice suppose the freedom to choose between good and evil; but what can be the morals of a woman who is not even in possession of herself, who has nothing of her own, and who all her life has been trained to extricate herself from the arbitrary by ruse, from constraint by using her charms?... As long as she is subject to man’s yoke or to prejudice, as long as she receives no professional education, as long as she is deprived of her civil rights, there can be no moral law for her!”
—Flora Tristan (1803–1844)
“The newly-formed clothing unions are ready to welcome her; but woman shrinks back from organization, Heaven knows why! It is perhaps because in organization one find the truest freedom, and woman has been a slave too long to know what freedom means.”
—Katharine Pearson Woods (1853–1923)