THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

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Incumbent Gov. Rod Blagojevich—considered by many to be a strong ally to the GLBT community—is running for a second term as the state's governor. Although many predict his race against Republican Judy Baar Topinka will be close, the governor promises that it is the stark contrast involving key issues, including equality and human rights, that makes the difference.

During his term, Blagojevich has helped support and pass landmark legislation that made gender identity and sexual orientation part of the Illinois' non-discrimination laws, putting the state at the forefront in the fight for equal rights. Using the power of executive order, the governor has also provided benefits for same-sex partners working under his office and forced pharmacists to fill prescriptions for female contraceptives.

Also during his term, Blagojevich has supported civil unions, boosted AIDS/HIV funding and urged Congress to support the reauthorization of the Ryan White CARE Act.

Blagojevich sat down with Windy City Times after key leaders of the GLBT community, including endorsing organization Equality Illinois, gathered to rally support for the governor to talk about his future plans to continue his support of the community if elected to a second term.

Windy City Times: You've done a lot for the GLBT community, including helping push through the Illinois Human Rights Act. What will you continue to do to help our community make progress if elected for another term?

Rod Blagojevich: I feel a personal sense of gratification for the progress we've made, especially in the area of equality and equal rights, including the things I've been able to do for the gay and lesbian community. I think about my own life experiences and things that are important to me, and I have a very simple governing philosophy: do onto others as you would have others do onto you. The kind of things that I think about that would have been helpful to my family growing up, I would think motivate me in the policies we push, the priorities we set, the things we try to get done for people, and that includes the gay and lesbian community.

We passed the employment non-discrimination act. We were the first in Illinois history to do that, and that's just the golden rule. You should be able to be free to live where you want to live, be able to work wherever you're qualified to work and not have your sexual orientation be held against you. We provided domestic-partnership agreements for all the governor's employees—57,000 of them—and, as a result, the other constitutional officers followed what we did, with the exception of Treasurer Topinka, who didn't do it. That's the golden rule—providing benefits to families, just like I'd expect for mine. When we appointed active leaders in the gay and lesbian community to big places in state government, like Illinois Director of Insurance Mike McRaith, that's the recognition of equal opportunity. But having someone like Mike McRaith at the head of the department of insurance, when insurance companies have so much to do with how they impact the quality of life for families, comes from that simple philosophy I have.

Moving forward, I'd like to move Illinois towards universal health care coverage, and get every child and every worker in Illinois health care. I want to continue to increase funding at the record levels we've provided for breast and cervical cancer screenings, which is something that would impact every community in our state, including the gay and lesbian community. We've increased funding for AIDS/HIV at record levels. I want to do more of that. Also, we want to be sure we enforce the laws we have on the books. We need to make sure we enforce, for example, the non-discrimination laws in employment and housing, and I'm going to direct our Illinois agencies to be extra-vigilant in enforcement. It's one thing to have the rules in the books; it's quite another to have people know that these rules exist and to be able to enforce those. Enforcement is going to be a big part of what we do.

WCT: What is your position on gay marriage, and if you don't support it, why not?

RB: Neither Treasurer Topinka nor I support the concept of gay marriage. I do support civil unions to the point to the fact we were able to get domestic-partnership agreements.

Your question is the question my sister-in-law, who is active in the community, asks me all the time. I really believe we can make immediate progress as we move forward on progressive issues, like domestic-partnership agreements, which we did, and like civil unions, which I think we can move forward on. That's a lot more realistic in the short term than trying to fight a battle, which would be very difficult to succeed at right now.

WCT: So the faster we can get the GLBT community its rights, the better?

RB: I just feel the changes you can do for people so they can actually enjoy those benefits now versus attempting things that might take a long, long time to try to achieve, the better. I view my responsibility as the governor is to try to help people now.

WCT: If elected, what will you do to continue to fight for a woman's right to choose?

RB: Think about what we've been able to do since I've been governor. The reproductive freedoms of women are more protected in Illinois than any state in America. That's in [ stark ] contrast to the advances and assaults coming from the Bush administration of Washington. We passed a law under my leadership to make insurance companies fill female contraceptives. Illinois had never done that before and we passed that law. I'm the only candidate in this race who is 100 percent pro-choice. We learned that there were guys behind the counters in pharmacies in Illinois who weren't dispensing birth control to women. Rather than try to get the legislature to pass something—because we attempted to and they didn't do it—on my own, through executive order action, I forced these guys to fill prescriptions for birth control for women who come in with prescriptions from their doctors. We're the only state to do that. We have a very strong record of protecting the reproductive rights and freedoms of women, and every step of the way moving forward, I would do what I did, and that is continue to fight for freedoms of women, gays and lesbians, and everybody because that is what America is—a land of freedom and opportunity.

WCT: What do you think your opponent's biggest weakness is?

RB: I think there are real issue differences between Treasurer Topinka and I. I would say on a host of issues, you can see issue differences, which I think really draw a distinction for Illinois and the direction our state is going to go in. We've provided health care for all children. She wants to cut health care by $2.9 billion dollars. We've been able to raise the minimum wage, and I want to do it again. She says we can't afford a 'giveaway' program. We want to ban assault weapons. She says she's opposed to that, and it's like banning rolling pins. We fund stem-cell research in Illinois. We couldn't get the legislature to do it, so I did it on my own through executive order. She doesn't like the way we did it, which is to say it would never happen because the legislature won't pass it. On the issue of domestic partnership agreements for gay and lesbian employees, I was the first constitutional officer by executive order, on my own, to order all 57,000 state employees under the governor, those who are gay and lesbian, to receive domestic-partnership benefits. Treasurer Topinka refused to do that for her state employees in [ her ] office. There's a big difference on an issue like that. I'm pro-choice without restriction. She has restrictions on her position.

WCT: What will you personally do to address issues of corruption in state government?

RB: I think we're making a lot of progress there. I know you read a lot of stories in the papers. That's part of cleaning up the system that has been corrupt for a long, long time. The most recent person to plead guilty of a corruption scheme yesterday is a longtime Republican operative, and it was very clear in his plea agreement that his activities began long before our administration [ was in place ] .

We now have, through my efforts, landmark legislation in place since the end of 2003. We have an independent inspector general in state government—former U.S. attorneys—whose job it is to police the system. They have staff, they have budgets, they have the right to subpoena and they're out there finding wrongdoing. They are finding wrongdoing, even with employees we may have hired, because that's what their job is.

The fact that we have that kind of policing going on in state government today is a substantial step forward to improving the quality of ethics in state government. We require all state employees, up to the governor, to take ethics tests every couple of years to make sure we remind everybody what their responsibilities are. We enforce the rules a lot better today than we ever did, and sometimes you read stories in the newspapers, but that's because we're the ones enforcing those things, and that's all part of cleaning up the system. It takes time to change a system that's been operating like that for a whole generation or longer. But I think it's a lot better today than it was, and when you clean things up sometimes, a little bit of that mud falls on you, too. I think that's an indication of us trying to clean things up.

See www.rodforillinois.com .