From the Andersonville Daily
Some stories land with a bang producing cataclysmic changes. Andersonville’s top story for 2011 isn’t that type of change. It is one that every day is quietly and fundamentally causing silently profound changes.
Civil Unions.
It started on January 31st when Governor Quinn signed a bill. And then moved to June 1st when hundreds of Illinois couples began lining up so that on June 2, the first GLBT couples in Illinois could be given real legal recognition of their relationships. You may not see it. Or participate in it. And you may feel like civil unions had no impact on your life whatsoever. But make no mistake, in six short months civil unions have fundamentally altered Andersonville.
Within the GLBT community, civil unions have been greeted with both joy and skepticism. Joy at the recognition. Skepticism because large differences remain between civil unions and marriage. But in what has been a sure and steady stream, Andersonville couples have been lining up at the county clerk’s office to answer questions that only our straight residents had the opportunity to be asked by a methodical bureaucratic clerk: Who is your father? Your mother? Where were you born? Are you both over 18? Simple questions that produced a marriage license now offer some measure of legal guarantees for Andersonville’s gay and lesbian couples in what census data shows has become the hub of Chicago’s GLBT couples.
Long term couples were amongst the most skeptical of civil unions. Outside of the legal guarantees, many long term couples had already built rock solid relationships of grace and dignity that required no license to stay together. To some, therefore, a civil union was nothing but a legal document. But as one Andersonville couple after another lined up, even the most skeptical couples who had already been together for 20 or more years could not deny that a civil union was a seminal moment for a relationship because recognition — and respect — matter.
Civil unions did not just give couples legal rights they had been denied; civil unions gave couples the respect they had long lived without.
For those not directly impacted by civil unions, you can see it quietly on a daily basis on any block in Andersonville. Your friend or neighbor changing a Facebook status to “in a civil union.” Attending your first civil union celebration….just like a wedding. Peering out your window and seeing that handsome neighborly couple dressed to the nines — just like a wedding. For GLBT citizens civil unions have changed everything, and in the face of loud contrarians — changed nothing. Marriages haven’t failed. Buildings haven’t crumbled. Quite the contrary, in Andersonville civil unions have helped gay and straight neighbors build a stronger fabric by inviting straight neighbors into GLBT relationships.
In doing so, they are discovering the differences are few and risks of the unknown are non-existent. And the more GLBT couples share their lives with family and neighbors, the faster the remaining walls will collapse.
If civil unions is the story of the year, then State Representative Greg Harris — Andersonville’s own civil union architect — must be Andersonville’s Person of the Year. Harris navigated a treacherous and tricky path to civil union’s passage by earning his own respect in Springfield. He is one of the few Springfield legislators that has built person-by-person relationships on both sides of the aisle by negotiating in good faith. By showing respect, he earned respect for Andersonville’s GLBT couples. Bravo. In a state never short of convicted Governors, pension scammers, and con artists, Greg Harris is a public servant well deserving of our respect.
The work is far from done. Disparities exist between civil unions and marriage. But as more and more Illinois residents come to participate in the lives of their GLBT family and neighbors, those walls will come down.
Civil unions is the first dramatic bite of the apple otherwise known as marriage equality. Andersonville’s history has turned… making civil unions our 2011 story of the year.