CHICAGO - More conservative leaders within the Illinois Republican Party are voicing their dismay with party Chairman Pat Brady's phone calls to Republican senators urging them to vote in support of legalizing same sex marriage.
"You can put me on the record that I want Pat Brady to step down due to his actions of supporting Gay Marriage, which is against the Illinois Republican Party Platform," McLean County GOP Chairman John Parrot told IR. "How can he be a leader when he doesn’t any longer believe in what our Party stands for? I also question his position with his Church, which is outspoken against gay marriage. He has failed his belief of his Church’s teaching and he has failed his Party."
“Mr. Brady, I ask you on behalf of our Party and for all Conservatives within our Party and the Families of our Party, it’s time for your to resign as our leader," Parrott said Wednesday night.
Parrott is on the County Chairman’s Executive Committee, and serves as Party Chairman of McLean County Republican Party, (Bloomington/Normal). He also served on the 2012 IL GOP Platform Committee.
Karen Hayes, another platform committee member representing the 1st Congressional District in Worth Township, spoke out in defense of the 2012 platform:
"Pat Brady has discredited himself as the head of the Illinois Republican Party and should step down now that it is clear he does not embrace a core principle of his own party's platform--traditional marriage. If Chairman Brady wishes to redefine marriage for his own personal reasons, he surely must understand that his desire simply cannot coexist with freedom and good public policy as ratified and affirmed by the Illinois Republican Party," Hayes said.
"Having served on the 2012 Illinois Republican Platform Committee, I am particularly provoked that our party chairman would take time on the first business day of our New Year NOT to make calls on behalf of pension reform and spending cuts, NOT to make calls on behalf of our beseiged 2nd Amendment, NOT to make calls on behalf of anything in the 2012 Illinois Republican Platform at all. Instead, he calls Republican legislators to ask them to redefine marriage, a traitorous assault on one of our party platform's most important social tenets as well as current Illinois and federal law.
"Pat Brady needs to step down now. Sadly, he has embarrassed himself and the Illinois Republican Party."
