'You can't legislate who you love:' State Rep. Deborah Mell

'You can't legislate who you love:' State Rep. Deborah Mell
BY CAROL MARIN
Copyright by The Sun-Times
April 28, 2010
http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/2207618,carol-marin-mell-same-sex-marriage-042810.article



In Springfield today on the floor of the House, state Rep. Deborah Mell (D-Chicago) will make a bit of history.

She’ll ask Speaker Michael Madigan for permission to address her colleagues on a matter not listed on the day’s calendar. And then Mell, 41, will share something personal. That she is engaged to be married.

What will make this moment historic in the annals of Illinois politics is that Mell’s fiancee, Christin Baker, is a woman.

Unlike only five states, Illinois has never come close to approving civil unions, much less same-sex marriage.

Bills to change that are buried in committee with no prayer of being passed this session. They wouldn’t even if this weren’t an election year.

Gov. Quinn, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, Sen. Bill Brady, are opposed to same-sex marriage. As is Barack Obama, the president and favorite son of Illinois.

And so the big hitch in Mell and Baker’s happiness is that they must leave home to wed in Washington D.C. or one of five states — Iowa, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire and Connecticut — that will welcome them.

“I have to go to Iowa,” Mell said Tuesday, “a great state, but not where I grew up, not where my friends and family are.”

What will she tell her colleagues?

“That you can’t legislate who you love and can’t punish people for it,” she said. “That we are a regular couple, pay taxes, own a home, have a great belief in God.”

Baker, national director of arts and humanities for YMCA USA, will also be on the House floor Wednesday. It will be her 35th birthday.

And, Mell said, “She will be wearing my Mom’s ring.”

Margaret Mell died in 2006, but not before telling her daughter “how much she liked Christin.”

Deborah Mell hails from deep and tangled Chicago political roots. Her father, Ald. Dick Mell, is the legendary boss of Chicago’s 33rd Ward.

Her sister, Patti Blagojevich, is married to this state’s first impeached governor, who goes on trial in June on federal corruption charges.

Gay or straight, I figure you’d have to be madly in love to even consider having Dick Mell and Rod Blagojevich as your in-laws.

Yet another test is that Mell and Baker, even when legally married in Iowa, will not have the same federal legal rights as their heterosexual married friends. Not when it comes to property, pensions and insurance, not even hospital visitation if one of them is sick or dying.

But let’s be honest, Tiger Woods, heterosexual marriage isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be.

“I think,” Baker said, “the gay community is lifting up the sanctity of marriage more than the straight community. More than Elizabeth Taylor, who’s been married eight times, or Rush Limbaugh and all his wives.”

Two weeks ago, Mell took Baker to dinner. When dessert arrived, Margaret Mell’s diamond ring was perched atop Baker’s creme brulee.

“I yelled, ‘Oh my God’ . . . she put the ring on my finger . . . I think I said ‘yes’ . . . and three or four tables around us started clapping,” Baker said.

I think we all should be clapping.