Marriage Equality Battle Lines Have Been Drawn in Minnesota

Minnesota legislators voted over the weekend to allow a voter initiative on the 2012 ballot to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage. This one's got NOM's lying sack of shit Maggie Gallagher's pudgy fingerprints all over it. NOM has partnered with the Minnesota Family Council to spread the kind of lies not seen since the Nazi campaign against the Jews during Depression-era Germany.

Here are just a few of the choicest lies from MRC's website:

2b. The more public expressions of homosexuality there are, the more likely one is to experiment with it.

2c. Some homosexuals, especially lesbians, consciously choose a homosexual lifestyle as part of a political agenda.

There is no significant evidence that homosexuality is biologically determined. Many experts concur that homosexuality is not primarily a genetic condition.

8a. Homosexual practices are often astonishing to heterosexual people. Homosexuals must use body apertures not constructed for sexual penetration or bring their mouth into contact with areas designed for the elimination of human waste, which causes serious hygienic and health risks. Some homosexuals become urolagniacs (ingesting urine and feces) and engage in bestiality as well as other deviant behaviors. (See my post "What to Tell Your Kinds About Gay Sex".)

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, rational minds are speaking out in response to the Minnesota vote. The White House released it's standard non-committal statement to The Washington Blade, saying, "The President has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples or to take such rights away. While he believes this is an issue best addressed by the states, he also believes that committed gay couples should have the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country."

US Congressman from Minnesota, Al Franken took a bolder stance, telling The Advocate, "Every Minnesotan deserves dignity and equal treatment under the law, and our state’s same-sex couples should have the same right to marry as anyone else — period. This amendment would do nothing more than write discrimination into our state’s constitution and add to the barriers same-sex couples already face to the full recognition of their families. I’m hopeful that common sense and compassion will prevail and that this amendment will be defeated."

Meanwhile Minnesota's other congressional rep and Queen of  Teabagger Land, Michelle Bachman has gotten herself so lathered up over the gays that she seems to have forgotten which side of the issue she supports, within the same statement: 

"In 5,000 years of recorded human history, [no] society [has] ever defined marriage as anything other than between men and women," she said in April during an Iowa Family Leader lecture series appearance. "Not one in 5,000 years of recorded human history. That's an astounding fact and it isn't until the last 12 years or so that we have seen for the first time in recorded human history marriage defined as anything other than between men and between women."

Bachman also believes that dinosaurs and humans lived together in the same neighborhood, like on The Flintstones. This is how desperate the professional homophobes are. They can't win with the truth, so they make shit up. Even though most mainstream Republicans can see the writing on the wall when it comes to marriage equality, there are still some old school members of the party that have such weak positions on the issues that matter, like the economy, that they still resort to the old reliable tactics of scapegoating minorities to rally their bigoted base. 

The Minnesota Independant reported Monday that the Senate server crashed due to hundreds of thousands of angry pro-marriage equality emails flooding in-boxes. Accusations are flying that the emails were deleted before they could reach their intended legislators:

“Hundreds of thousands of emails have come in the aftermath, so many so that the Republican caucus is deleting them before their members even get to see them,” Dibble told MPR.

Sen. Warren Limmer, the chief author of the anti-gay marriage amendment, said, “Not true. Not true. We aren’t wiping off comments of our constituents. That’s just simply not true.”

Sen. Dibble answered back, “That absolutely is true, and that’s exactly what the secretary of the Senate has told us.”

Secretary of the Senate Cal Ludeman tells the Minnesota Independent that the sheer volume of email coming into the system had caused it to crash on Sunday. By early Monday morning 230,000 emails had flooded in, he said, adding that he ordered the IT department to send a large number to a spam filter.

He said that those emails coming in would not be deleted and that they were working to “filter them back in.”

He wasn’t aware which emails were coming in or which ones needed to be sent to a spam filter.

“We are managing the traffic and they’ll be flowed back into the system,” he said.
Already the flood of emails has rankled some legislators. Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Good Thunder, responded to the emails over the weekend in a manner some thought rude

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• Majority of Americans Support Gay Marriage (foxnews.com)
• White House Responds to Anti-Gay Minnesota Marriage Amendment (towleroad.com)
• Gay Marriage : Battles Remain, the War is Won. (queeringthechurch.com)
• Minnesota House Passes Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment (lezgetreal.com)
• Minnesota: Ban on Same-Sex Marriage to Appear on 2012 Ballot (elections.firedoglake.com)