May 24--Illinois legalized same-sex marriage in June 2014, and the U.S. Supreme Court legalized it in all 50 states a year later.
A recent Gallup Poll showed 61 percent approval for such unions, a number that's sure to keep going up given the nearly 80 percent approval other polls have found among 18- to 34-year-olds.
The debate is over. America is moving on.
Yet dead-enders in the Illinois Republican Party, bless their hearts, voted 782 to 186 at their state convention Saturday to reject revised platform language that would have embraced a "diversity of opinions within (the) party regarding families" and acknowledged "that nontraditional families are worthy of the same respect and legal protections as traditional families."
Advocates for that change, which had earlier been OK'd by the platform committee, were loudly booed by those who backed the restoration of previous platform language that underscored "the principle of marriage between one man and one woman."
Nothing against one-man, one-woman marriages. I've been in one for 30 years myself and give the institution a five-star Yelp rating. But those who persist in wanting to discriminate against same-sex couples are only marginalizing themselves, and parties that proclaim their adherence to outmoded prejudices might as well simply hang out a "not welcome" sign to the bipartisan curious whom they might otherwise attract.
It was surprising that the Illinois GOP went small-tent here. Their top national figure, U.S. Sen. Mark Kirk, announced his support for gay marriage in April 2013, when he declared "life comes down to who you love and who loves you back -- government has no place in the middle." And the party's top state official, Gov. Bruce Rauner, is so evidently fearful of this divisive issue that he's refused ever to reveal his personal view on it.
State Republican delegates also voted to reject proposed language in another plank recognizing abortion as allowable under "limited circumstances" -- code for the exceptions for rape and incest routinely supported by about 80 percent of the public in scientific polling.
But it's their party, and I'll laugh until I cry if I want to.
Meanwhile, in other platform-related news, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders on Monday announced the five people he gets to name to the 15-member national Democratic Party Platform Drafting Committee.
Front-runner Hillary Clinton gets six slots on the committee (one of whom is U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago), with the remaining four picks going to party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Clinton supporter.
It was unprecedented for the party to cede nearly a third of the platform committee to a losing candidate, let alone one who isn't even a Democrat. And it revealed how concerned party officials are that Sanders and his wounded supporters will go away mad from the convention in July and destroy hopes for the Democratic unity that will be necessary to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Sanders, who has expressed his interest in crafting "the most progressive platform in the history of this country," named an aggressively liberal slate, including Cornel West, an African-American academic who attacks President Barack Obama from the left, an American Indian activist, a Muslim congressman and a pro-Palestinian scholar.
The peace gesture has set the stage for a policy war when the platform drafting committee meets and then when convention delegates are asked to approve or modify their work. That war seems as likely to alienate members of Team Sanders as it is to placate them.
And if you're thinking what I'm thinking right about now, you're thinking platforms? Really? Who gives a rat's ear about platforms?
They're the user-agreements of political agitprop. Nobody reads these sententious mission statements except opponents looking to pick nits -- remember when Republicans nearly swooned with umbrage in 2012 when they found that the word "God" did not appear in the national Democratic platform? -- and nobody, particularly nominees, is bound by them.
Today's major parties are, by necessity, too big and too geographically diverse to speak with one voice on every issue. Modern communication technology makes it possible for primary and general election candidates to convey their positions directly to voters.
Quarreling over platform verbiage would all be just good sandbox time for partisan wonks and monomaniacs if their work product didn't ultimately have the potential to drive voters away from a party they might otherwise support. Extreme positions, however unmoored from the views of actual candidates, can be a lasting turnoff.
Scrap them, I say. Break down all those planks, stack them on a pile and set them on fire. Better to burn your platforms, party bosses, before they burn you.
