More on Gubernatorial Candidate Bruce Rauner

Written by Laurie Higgins

Following my piece on Pat Brady yesterday in which I mentioned gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner, we received email inquiries about his anti-life, anti-marriage views.  The Chicago Tribune reported that Rauner “supports abortion rights early in pregnancy.” Rauner didn’t clarify what constitutes “early,” or why babies who have reached mid-gestation deserve protection whereas less developed babies do not.

Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass squeezed a terse and peculiar anti-marriage statement out of a resistant Rauner in April:

Bruce Rauner, the multimillionaire Republican businessman who wants to become governor of Illinois, sat down with me for an interview Thursday and dodged questions about same-sex marriage.

It took about four tries to pin him down on where he stands, and finally, it came to this: He’s not for it. He’s not against it.

“If, for example, the Legislature passes gay marriage, I’m not going to fight to reverse it,” he said. …

“Gay marriage, it’s an important issue,” Rauner said….

You have no personal feeling about gay marriage?

“I really don’t,” Rauner said.

Just to clarify Rauner’s evasive language: If the legislature passes a bill, it goes to the governor’s desk. If he opposes it, he vetoes it. If he doesn’t “fight to reverse it,” he signs it into law. It would have been a heck of a lot easier if Rauner had just said that if the same-sex marriage bill passes in Springfield, he will sign it into law.

It’s remarkable that Rauner claims to believe that “gay marriage” is “an important issue” and yet “really” doesn’t have any personal feelings about it. Truthfully, I’m not particularly interested in Rauner’s feelings about “gay marriage.” I’m very interested, however, in his beliefs and his reasons for his beliefs about the legal recognition of same-sex unions as “marriage.”

There is too much at stake for children, families, marriage, and religious liberty in Illinois to elect someone who demonstrates such a lack of forthrightness and such intellectual and moral shallowness.