The Illinois Family Institute which was designated an anti-gay “hate group” in 2009 is running scared that lawmakers who will reconvene under Springfield’s Capitol dome today and that the Democratic controlled Illinois Senate could get started as early as today with legislation to legalize same-sex marriage.

Over the weekend Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George urged parishioners to let state lawmakers know they oppose gay marriage and wrote letter to priests in the Roman Catholic archdiocese telling them to do the same.

George wrote that allowing gay couples to marry would be “acting against the common good of society.” and that “Civil laws that establish ‘same-sex marriage’ create a legal fiction. The state has no power to create something that nature itself tells us is impossible.”

Image below via the awesome Jeremy Hooper at Good As You