On March 5, the Illinois Religious Freedom and Protection Civil Unions Act (HB 2234) passed a House committee and is now on its way to the House floor, potentially making Illinois the first state in the Midwest to legalize civil unions.

If the bill were to become a law, it would be a simple, but highly effective solution in allowing same sex couples the same benefits, rights and responsibilities of a marriage without changing Illinois marriage laws.

This bill would not only serve a long overdue need to provide same-sex couples with a necessary right, but it would also allow widowed senior citizens, who decide to enter a relationship later in life, the legal rights that a church-sanctioned marriage would provide.

Opposition to this bill, not surprisingly, comes from many religious groups, particularly the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. According to a March 6 article in The Advocate, members of the LDS community sent out a private e-mail to Illinois citizens, urging them to take a stand against legalizing civil unions. The Human Rights Campaign said that the e-mail “blatantly misstates that the civil unions legislation would ‘empower public schools to begin teaching this lifestyle to our young children regardless of parental requests otherwise.’”

More importantly, the ACLU states this bill would assure that no religious denomination would be forced to recognize a relationship that falls outside of its belief system, thereby removing the ever-redundant church conversation from this debate. And for people who believe that same-sex marriage is unlawful or immoral, the solution is simple: Don’t marry someone of the same sex. This law has nothing to do with you.

To say that all same sex marriages are bad is similar to stating that all heterosexual marriages are good, which is simply untrue, as evidenced by the astonishing divorce rate present in the United States.

In a time where our state is receiving enough negative press, passing this bill into a law would be highly effective in getting Illinois some much-needed positive attention.

And,  it’s just the right thing to do.