Updated April 14, 2011: SB 1123 failed to make it out of committee.

Filed on Monday, April 11th, Amendment 1 to Senate Bill 1123 would permit religiously-based adoption agencies acting on behalf of the State of Illinois (and using STATE funds!) to discriminate against couples who have entered into a civil union and, as a consequence, place children at risk of being denied the best family placement for them.

The State of Illinois should not sanction and fund discrimination.

The Illinois Civil Union Act was only signed into law in January - and won't take effect until June 1st. But already the same forces that opposed basic fairness for lesbian and gay couples in Illinois are seeking to write discrimination into the law. This change not only discriminates against couples with civil unions, it threatens the well-being of some of our state’s most vulnerable children – those in need of permanent, safe homes. Surely, our leaders cannot permit the Civil Union bill to be twisted so that some can place their religious views over the interests of at-risk children.

An article in the Windy City Times this week took a historical look back at the AIDS epidemic in Chicago and across the country.

At least three decades ago doctors started noticing illnesses impacting their gay male patients. And soon it became clear that an epidemic was at hand.

The story notes that, during the summer of 1981, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR, June 5 and July 3) first reported that a new disease might be in our midst. It could have been around for years, but was just at that time starting to exhibit itself.

The individual illnesses striking these young gay men were otherwise rare—pneumocystis carinii pneumonia and Kaposi's sarcoma, the latter manifested as purple lesions. These and other strange illnesses had started to be diagnosed some 30 months prior to the 1981 MMWR reports. In January 1982 the syndromes together began to be called GRID, gay-related immunodeficiency, and the acronym stood until July of that year, when it was renamed AIDS, or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

The rumors and media reports, including those in the gay press, only trickled out for many months. But by 1983—'84, it was clear a major epidemic was at hand, one that struck more than gay men.

In Chicago, while existing organizations such as Howard Brown Memorial Clinic (now Howard Brown Health Center) and Gay Horizons (now Center on Halsted) tried to cope with new legal, psychosocial, and health issues facing the community, more support would be needed.

Within three years, major institutions were founded, many of them still in existence in 2011. These included AIDS Foundation of Chicago, Chicago House, Open Hand (now Vital Bridges), Test Positive Aware Network, Stop AIDS, Kupona Network, AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, Chicago Women's AIDS Project, and dozens more. Eventually, more than 100 agencies dealt with some aspect of AIDS, from fundraising events, such as AIDS Walk and the AIDS Ride, to service groups, research and prevention organizations.

Go here to keep reading.

A USA Today story published this week examines the divergent points of view on the sale of contraceptives. The ACLU of Illinois Executive Director Colleen Connell provides an interesting perspective.

People who think pharmacists who oppose abortion should not be required to sell the "morning after pill" call laws to support this "conscience laws." People who think women should have access to legal medications they need call them "refusal laws."

You can see it in the comments following this week's ruling in support of the 1998 Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act. In 2005, then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich issued a ruling to force "pharmacies to fill prescriptions without making moral judgments.

But when the state tried to enforce this, two pharmacists, aided by the American Center for Law and Justice, went to court for the right to refuse. Tuesday, Circuit Judge John Belz wrote that governor's ruling was unconstitutional, that it would be...

... coercing individuals or entities to provide healthcare services that violate their belief.

The pharmacists and the ACLJ are delighted. The ruling affects commercial pharmacies as well as individuals who might pick and choose which FDA-approved legal medications they believe should be dispensed. As the Center's site notes, the judge's ruling points out:

Meanwhile, The state's attorney general is appealing and the American Civil Liberties Union is joining in. Colleen K. Connell, Illinois ACLU director pointed out:

The court's ruling fails to account for the important constitutional rights at issue when women are denied access to reproductive health care and medication.

The battle over whose conscience trumps medical choices is far wider than Illinois, of course. It puts health workers who bring their faith and values to their jobs in tension with their clients, patients and customers who may have different beliefs on whether or when to have children.

The ACLU is tracking cases state by state and in Congress and finds this tension goes beyond contraception issues.