WASHINGTON, D.C., April 3, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – Senator Mark Kirk, R-IL, became the second GOP senator to publicly embrace same-sex “marriage” Tuesday.
“When I climbed the Capitol steps in January, I promised myself that I would return to the Senate with an open mind and greater respect for others,” the senator wrote in a statement. “Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this Earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back – government has no place in the middle.”
Kirk, who suffered from a serious stroke in 2012 and recently returned to the Senate after a year recovering, is the 50th U.S. Senator to come out publicly in favor of redefining marriage to include homosexual couples. His announcement comes on the heels of another high-profile GOP reversal on the issue, that of Rob Portman, R-OH, who came out in support of gay “marriage” because he has a homosexual son that he would like to see wed.
All of the other 48 senators who support same-sex nuptials are Democrats.
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In his statement, Kirk blamed his illness for his changing views. But in interviews with media, he also pointed to Steven Spielberg’s film “Lincoln” as a catalyst, along with a staffer’s meeting with a ten-year-old girl whose adoptive gay parents brought her to ask Kirk to support federal marriage for her two dads.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Kirk’s legislative aide Gretchen Blum met with Braiden Neubecker, who was adopted at age four by homosexual couple Lee and David Neubecker. Braiden’s school essay about how much she loves living with her two dads was published by the Windy City Times and went viral with help from her well-connected father, Lee, who owns the computer company Forensicon.
Lee’s partner David, who accompanied Braiden to Washington in March, told the Sun-Times that his daughter told Kirk’s aide why “her two dads should be allowed to get married.” (The two men were “married” in California in 2004, but Illinois does not legally recognize the union.) Braiden’s essay was also included in an amicus brief filed by PFLAG in the Supreme Court case against California’s gay marriage ban and the Defense of Marriage Act.
Laurie Higgins of Illinois Family Action took to her blog Tuesday to criticize the senator’s abandonment of the defense of marriage.
“When polygamists and polyamorists come knocking on marriage’s door, we should all remember Kirk’s wise words that ‘government has no place’ getting between people who love each other,” Higgins wrote sarcastically.
Added Higgins, “Kirk and U.S. Senator Rob Portman … can hide behind the utterly false rhetoric of equality and compassion and thus conceal from America and perhaps themselves their complicity in the destruction of this once great nation. And what will this mean for America? Diminished religious liberty, diminished speech rights, diminished parental rights, increasing numbers of children denied their inherent right to know and be raised by their biological mother and father, and the ultimate destruction of marriage.”