UPDATED, 5:55 p.m.: Rep Ives has issued a further clarification in a Patch Local Voices submission.
Recent comments by 42nd District Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton), made on a Catholic Conference of Illinois (CCI) radio show in February, that same-sex marriages are "completely disordered" and that gays are "trying to weasel their way into acceptability" have been attacked by same-sex marriage proponents, the Huffington Post and Daily Herald report.
"They're trying to redefine society," she told the station. "They're trying to weasel their way into acceptability so that they can then start to push their agenda down into the schools, because this gives them some sort of legitimacy... And we can't allow that to happen."(Listen to part of the interview above)
"It's a completely disordered relationship," she said.
Ives also said that "to not have a mother and a father is really a disordered state for a child to grow up in and it really makes that child an object of desire rather than the result of a matrimony."
Gov. Pat Quinn has pledged to sign a bill if it passes with the necessary 60 votes in the House, which would make Illinois the 10th state to allow same-sex marriages. The bill passed in the state Senate in February.
"Poll after poll shows that the fair-minded people of Illinois support marriage equality," Anthony Martinez, executive director of The Civil Rights Agenda, told ChicagoPride.com. "Representatives on both sides of the aisle really need to think about how they want to be remembered in 20 years. Will they be on the side of fairness and equality, or on the side where Representative Ives is standing now?"
Speaking to the Herald, Ives said her remarks had been "misinterpreted" and that they were "specifically about the institution of marriage."
"Unfortunately that's the issue we have to talk about in Springfield. I didn't go down there to talk about gay marriage," she told CCI.
Founded in 1969, the Catholic Conference of Illinois interacts with state government regarding interests of the church, according to the organization's website.
Ives was elected to serve in the 42nd District in November of 2012. She formerly served as an at-large. Wheaton City Council member.
Read more at the Huffington Post, the Daily Herald and ChicagoPride.com, or listen to the interview on the CCI website.
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