What Pat Brady's resignation in Illinois means for gay marriage and the GOP

The state's outgoing GOP chair faced a backlash for supporting a bill to legalize same-sex marriage

Pat Brady
(Image credit: AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

In a widely expected move, embattled Illinois GOP Chairman Pat Brady resigned on Tuesday. Brady said he wanted to spend more time with his family as his wife fights cancer, but social conservatives have been calling for Brady's head for months. They're angry over his support for a gay marriage bill floated in the state legislature this year — the latest in a series of similar measures taken up across the country. The GOP's drubbing in the November election, which gave Illinois Democrats veto-proof majorities in the state House and Senate, didn't help.

No matter how Brady's departure is spun, the takeaway is that the Illinois GOP is doubling down on its opposition to gay marriage. Though "it's pretty clear that support for marriage equality is what forced [Brady] out of office," says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. After he came out for the marriage bill, 50 conservatives called for his resignation at a meeting in April. "On some level, I suppose one can understand that a political party would want it's leader to reflect the positions that the party takes, or at least not to openly disagree with part of the party's platform," says Mataconis. Still, "this is just another sign that the GOP remains behind the times" on marriage equality. It's likely to become the law of the land in Illinois this year, so the GOP is needlessly damaging itself with this "pointless war," he adds.

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Harold Maass, The Week US

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at The Week. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 debut of the U.S. print edition and served as editor of TheWeek.com when it launched in 2008. Harold started his career as a newspaper reporter in South Florida and Haiti. He has previously worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, ABC News and Fox News, and for several years wrote a daily roundup of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance.