Gay marriage defeated again, but not forever

Abill to legalize gay marriage in Illinois, we now learn, likely won’t go anywhere in the spring session of the state Legislature, which brings to mind Ron Paul.

Paul, the passionate libertarian running for the Republican nomination for president, no doubt figured out early on — let’s say the Iowa caucuses — that he was unlikely to prevail, but he plugs along. Paul’s aim always has been as much about selling the philosophy in 2010, showed that only a third of registered voters support gay marriage. But, like Paul, gay marriage backers understand that social progress almost always comes by changing enough hearts and minds. The law and the courts will follow. By introducing HB 5710, they were determined to keep the conversation going.

It’s a strategy that State Rep. Greg Harris, a Chicago Democrat, and his colleagues employed to push through a civil unions bill, signed last year, that gives samesex couples in Illinois many — but not — all of the legal protections of married couples. All the same, we’re disappointed. We feel certain that future generations will look back on these times and wonder what the big deal was. To deny gay people the right to live and love and care for each other as they please, with full and equal protection under the law, will seem as absurd as denying women the right to vote and ordering black people to sit in the back of the bus.

Eight states and the District of Columbia have approved gay marriage. We look forward to the day when Illinois joins them.

Until then, like Ron Paul, we’ll keep on pushing.

It was a small foreign item in the news last month, barely registering for many. But I was glued to the news feeds of the funeral and burial ceremonies for this man on March 1 and 2. Where had I heard that name? Ojukwu.

As a Nigerian American, I knew the history well. A Nigerian military officer and politician, Ojukwu was the Igbo governor of Nigeria’s Eastern Region in 1966, when ethnic and religious tensions among that nation’s majority tribes — the Igbos, Hausas and Yorubas — led to a mass slaughter of Igbos across the Northern Region. An outraged Ojukwu declared secession of the Igbos on May 30, 1967.

The Nigerian-biafran War began in July 1967, and before the surrender of the short-lived Biafran nation in January 1970, a naval, land and air blockade