By Nancy Thorner -
The Illinois State GOP Convention was held in Peoria May 20-21, 2016, and I attended as a delegate, whose name was initially submitted by Mark Shaw, Republican State Central Committee Member representing the 10th Congressional District for the Illinois State GOP Convention. Shaw appointed Bonnie Quirke, who heads Lake County Right for Life, as his Deputy.
There were 978 voting delegates present, the largest number in recent years, mostly to vote on a major platform issue in the party. The stacked platform committee on Friday voted 60% to 40% to drop the previous definition of marriage as 1 man and 1 woman (normative throughout all of recorded history), according to their sex on their birth certificates (or by visual identification of their genitalia more specifically).
This 60% majority of the platform committee intended to substitute other forms of marriage, such as homosexual and lesbian, legalized recently by the Supreme Court and by other states.
The full Convention voted down substitute marriages 80% to 20%. Voting was by head count, not voice vote, because most delegates believed the vote could have gone either way. The platform committee wrote the substitution as a double negative (an old trick to fool the unwary to vote the opposite of their intentions), so we made sure to vote "yes" to block marriage redefinition. Long-time GOP delegates for 30 or 40 years were amazed and pleased by the results. I would think that something like an 80% plurality is very rare.
The marriage issue in turn brought transgenderism into focus, where sex can be self-changed into what "gender" you "feel" you are. Discrimination against transgenderism has been added recently to the Title IX law by the Obama administration, an unconstitutional move because transgender discrimination was never foreseen or intended by the legislature in the 1970's.
Even more, it has proven to be a legal lunacy that the courts can't handle. If schools can't discriminate against a deranged boy who has transgendered himself into a girl and therefore must be allowed to shower with girls and live in the girls dorm, schools can't discriminate against a healthy boy who prefers to shower with girls and live in the girls dorm. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Judges must have all parties to a suit stand naked before them in order to make a decision on whether discrimination is occurring. This is pure idiocy.
A few observations I sensed at the convention:
1. The Party has a significant number of homosexual, lesbian, and gender-benders who belong in the Democrat Party. There may have been Democrats present at the Convention under false pretenses. The Cook County delegation seemed to be the largest supporter of the substitute definition of marriage.
2. Delegates at the convention were especially furious over the Moderate GOP, or the "Democrat Light Party", that has refused to counter Obama and the Democrat Party after winning two elections. I believe men substantially outnumbered women at the Convention and yelled the loudest against substitute marriage. Also, Trump is by far the favorite of the delegates because he flattened the Moderate GOP into a dead skunk on the highway of life.
3. Delegates were incensed by the criminalization and the resulting stiff penalties for not accepting homosexual and lesbian marriage, like the prosecution of a baker in Oregon for not baking a cake for a lesbian "marriage" that awarded the lesbians $135,000 for their "psychic hurt." This is grossly unAmerican!
4. Male delegates were additionally incensed by the idea of men "transgendered" into women and invading girls bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dorms, and other historically sex-segregated facilities by new laws being imposed in favor of a cultural rot devoted to an infinitesimally small percentage of the population.
5. Now men are being prosecuted for acting like men, by a deviant 1% to 3% of the population; the tail is wagging the dog. This cannot stand; real men and strong women will crush this nonsense.
6. Strong support was expressed for Trump by the delegates. I believe the coming election will prove it, or Trump will be a one term president.
As Bonnie O'Neil informed me, vice president of Eagle Forum in CA and my collaborator on many article published at Illinois Review, when I shared the results of the IL GOP 16 State Convention with her:
Fortunately you were able to win this time around. I went through this same thing in CA way back. We won that year too. But the liberals came back with a vengeance. If I could do it over again, I’d get the right delegates together and be prepared for their dirty tricks. They are mean and willing to do whatever it takes to win. PREPARATION is key. Be prepared for the worst case scenario. If you get enough people and they are VOCAL … you have a better chance. They will do their best to find a way to stop your from wining, so you have to be very smart and outwit and outshout them. Bring some powerful people to the table. Trust me, they will be coming back next time with a vengeance. Be strong; be prepared for a good fight.
As an aside apart from the Convention, I expect more evil and silliness to come from Democrats and deviant Republicans in (1) the criminal prosecution of climate-change deniers, which is already in process; (2) the confiscation of all guns "for children's safety;" and (3) the imposition of a Living Constitution to eliminate the present cast-in-granite Constitution that is "too difficult" to change — for good reason.
