Mayor Daley stepped into the storm surrounding gay marriage Wednesday, saying he has a “very open mind” and voicing support for the same-sex weddings that have fueled controversy nationwide.
“I have no problem with that issue at all,” Daley said to reporters who asked during a City Hall news conference in which Daley announced choices for top positions in his administration.
Some people believe that “only a man and a woman can get married, but in the long run, I think we have to understand what [proponents] are saying. They love one another just as much as anyone else. They believe the benefits that they don’t have they should have.”
Daley said, however, the city has no legal authority to issue marriage licenses, and he voiced no intention to follow the lead of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has allowed–if not encouraged–hundreds of same-sex weddings in the last week.
Asked if he agreed with those who claim that allowing homosexuals to marry each other would undermine the institution of marriage, Daley said, “No, because marriage has been undermined by divorce.”
“People should look at their own lives and look in their own marriage,” the mayor added. “I think marriage has been undermined for a number of years, if you look at the facts and figures on it. So don’t blame the gay, lesbian, transgendered, transsexual community; please don’t blame them for it.”
Cook County Clerk David Orr, who oversaw the implementation of a same-sex domestic partnership registry last year, said state law prohibits him from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples here.
The events in San Francisco came about, he said, because Newsom and other city officials led an organized effort to allow the couples to marry. Orr says he is keeping an eye on what’s happening in San Francisco, but there are no plans to replicate it in Chicago.
Rick Garcia, political director of Equality Illinois, a statewide gay rights lobbying group, doesn’t think Mayor Daley’s comments will bring gay marriage to Cook County in the immediate future.
“It’s largely symbolic,” Garcia said. “I don’t think people can line up tomorrow and get marriage licenses, but it does tell us where the mayor is, and given that the mayor is one of the most influential elected officials, not only in Chicago but in the country, that’s significant.”
“He’s a Midwestern, Catholic, mainstream kind of guy. … I think he went pretty far,” Garcia said.
Garcia lauded Daley and Orr as well-known supporters of gay rights and put the onus on the Illinois state legislature, which he said is nowhere near ready to legalize gay marriage.
“San Francisco is light-years ahead of the backward folks who are in our state legislature,” he said.
Like Daley, Gov. Rod Blagojevich has supported gay rights initiatives for employment and housing. But he said earlier this month that he could not endorse gay marriage.
Because of his support for gay rights, Daley has enjoyed strong support from the gay and lesbian communities, but his position on same-sex marriage puts him at odds with the Catholic Church.
In a statement issued earlier this month, Cardinal Francis George said, “The church concludes that there is no legal parity between marriage and homosexual unions because there is no biological or moral parity between them.”
That statement speaks for itself, and the Archdiocese of Chicago had no further comment on Daley’s remarks, spokesman Jim Dwyer said.
