This is priceless. Just absolutely, breathtakingly priceless. Wingnuts in Minnesota are pushing a constitutional amendment to write anti-gay discrimination into that state’s constitution, and here is their strategery:
Minnesota pastors and lawmakers who support a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman aim to develop varied strategies to win voter support.
At a strategy session today, a gathering of ministers and politicians known as the Faith and Freedom coalition discussed ways to sell the marriage amendment to people who may not hold their fervent views.
Among their solutions: avoiding arguments over whether gays should have the right to marry, presenting marriage as a vehicle for child-rearing and reframing the issue as an opportunity for Minnesotans to exercise their right to vote.
The first rule of Gay Haters Club is that you don’t talk about Gay Haters Club! Yes, that quote really says that they intend to sell this by not talking about the actual stated intention of the amendment, and by simply trying to get Minnesotans excited that they get to vote! Everybody likes voting!
Many GOP lawmakers who voted for the amendment were at the meeting, but the room came to its feet for a last-minute appearance by Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who first proposed a marriage amendment when she was a state senator. Before a room full of supporters she described how to sell the amendment more broadly:
“I think if you want to talk to people who are not interested in talking about the morality you can also come at it as “should people be allowed to vote,” Bachmann said.
That’ll get ‘em excited about hurting their gay family members!
Susan Allen is the first woman ever to have been elected to the Minnesota state legislature, and she’s openly gay and a Sioux tribe member to boot. Jezebel reports:
Susan Allen (not to be confused with the wife of Republican Virginia Senator George Allen) is the polar opposite of her fellow Minnesota countrywoman Michele Bachmann. She’s a progressive rather than a Tea Partier, she lives in a mixed income Minneapolis neighborhood rather than a McMansion in the exurbs, and she’s a lesbian rather than a lesbian-fixer. Additionally, Allen has vowed to fight for defeat of Minnesota’s constitutional marriage amendment, which would effectively make same-sex marriage illegal in the state. Michele Bachmann is one of the leading architects of a previous failed attempt to legally define marriage as between one man and one woman.
Allen’s credentials are the sort of thing that makes the average privileged person living in comfort feel like a slouch. MPR reported back in December that Allen, now 48, grew up on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, one of the most poverty-stricken swaths of untenable land in the US. Her father was an Evangelical priest, and the family frequently moved. When she was a single mother in her early 20′s and on government assistance, she relied public transportation to get to and from her law school classes. She’s got experience working in tribal and tax law, and as of last year was a partner in her firm. By all accounts, she’s an all-around intimidatingly kickass, groundbreaking lady.
Wow. Saint Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt (Remember him? The one who turned the Catholic Mass and that church’s holiest sacrament into a weapon with which to bludgeon LGBT people?) does NOT want dissent within the clerical ranks when it comes to same-sex marriage.
In a dictatorial move, Nienstedt essentially told the priests of his diocese that when it came to the Minnesota Catholic church’s campaign to pass a constitutional marriage discrimination amendment, they had two choices: help out or shut up.
It is my expectation that all the priests and deacons in this Archdiocese will support this venture and cooperate with us in the important efforts that lie ahead. The gravity of this struggle, and the radical consequences of inaction propels me to place a solemn charge upon you all — on your ordination day, you made a promise to promote and defend all that the Church teaches. I call upon that promise in this effort to defend marriage. There ought not be open dissension on this issue. If any have personal reservations, I do not wish that they be shared publicly. If anyone believes in conscience that he cannot cooperate, I want him to contact me directly and I will plan to respond personally.
Writing for the American Independent, crack reporter Andy Birkey revealed yesterday that Nienstedt’s authoritarian remarks were delivered in a private speech to priests last October. Just to make sure his message reached every priest under his jurisdiction, the archbishop later sent the text of that speech to all priests who were unable to attend. (According to Birkey, Nienstedt’s remarks are only coming to light now because someone within the church leaked the speech to a group called the Progressive Catholic Voice, who released it to the media.) In the same address, Birkey reports that Nienstedt also spoke about sending teams consisting of “a priest and a married couple” into Catholic schools to discuss marriage discrimination with schoolchildren.
Minnesota Catholics: if you put money into the collection plate on Sundays, this is what you’re supporting. Yes, Nienstedt’s bigotry is out of step with the vast majority of Catholics. Yes, the Catholic church provides important services to poor and disadvantaged people. But there are dozens if not hundreds of charitable organizations providing the same services as the Catholic church without the spiritual bullying. When you donate to your local parish instead of these other charities, though, you give tacit approval to Nienstedt’s reprehensible persecution of your LGBT family members, friends, neighbors, and congregants.
Money talks. Assuming that the Catholic church will change its position on marriage equality or even ease up on its anti-gay attacks without significant incentive to do so is the height of folly.
Intimidating priests whose consciences might compel them to take a position on Minnesota’s marriage amendment different from that of the institutional church. Sending teams of adults into Catholic schools to teach children that only some of them will be worthy of marriage when they grow up. Ordering priests to organize grassroots political committees in their parishes for the express purpose of drumming up support for marriage discrimination. Producing and shipping DVDs attacking same-sex couples and families to every Catholic household in the state. Composing a prayer for divine help in the quest to write a divisive and discriminatory religious teaching into the civil constitution, then tying that prayer to the central act of unity in the Catholic tradition.
I can’t think of a more repulsive distortion of everything that a church is supposed to represent, and I couldn’t imagine supporting it with my hard-earned nickels and dimes. Minnesota Catholics, do you want this on your conscience?
Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Wednesday announcement that she is ending her White House bid comes as no surprise. While the Minnesota congresswoman was one of the first GOP candidates to experience a surge in the polls last summer as the party’s base searched frantically for a conservative alternative to Mitt Romney (she even won the Iowa straw poll in August), her campaign had been dogged by a series of high-profile missteps.
They included: suggesting that cervical cancer vaccines cause “mental retardation,” pledging to close the non-existent American embassy in Tehran, reassigning the location of the “shot heard ‘round the world” to New Hampshire rather than Massachusetts, and confusing movie star John Wayne with serial killer John Wayne Gacy.
The withering heat of the presidential vetting process also yielded an embarrassing and disturbing revelation about Bachmann: The “Christian counseling” clinic that she co-owns with her husband, Marcus, offers so-called “ex-gay therapy” that purports to turn clients from gay to straight.
The Bachmanns had long denied that their clinic endorsed this form of “therapy,” which has no basis in research, inflicts substantial harm to patients who are falsely told they can “pray away the gay,” and is denounced by every mainstream professional medical and mental health organization. However, working for the LGBT rights group Truth Wins Out and at the behest of founder Wayne Besen, I conducted an undercover, hidden-camera investigation last summer that provided incontrovertible proof of reparative therapy taking place at Bachmann & Associates.
TWO’s investigation disrupted the momentum of Rep. Bachmann’s campaign, highlighting the congresswoman’s virulently anti-LGBT views and the extent to which those views are out of step with those of most Americans. It helped to define the public perception of Michele and Marcus Bachmann as religious extremists, drew attention to her long legislative record of anti-LGBT bigotry, and made it more difficult for her to recast herself as a mainstream presidential candidate.
Equally important, it cast a glaring spotlight on ex-gay therapy and helped reinvigorate the ongoing national conversation around this issue.
However, we shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking that today’s announcement will mean we’ve heard the last from Michele Bachmann. She will return to Congress, where she will undoubtedly remain a forceful opponent of any and all efforts to advance LGBT equality. Bowing out of the presidential race allows Bachmann to focus her time and effort on her upcoming congressional re-election campaign in Minnesota, where it’s probable that she’ll lend her now-amplified voice to the effort to pass a proposed constitutional amendment banning any recognition of same-sex marriages or civil unions in that state. And Rep. Bachmann will most likely intensify her homophobia now that she no longer has to concern herself with attempting to appear presidential.
Finally, let’s not forget that the field of remaining presidential candidates is littered with homophobes, including a now-surging Rick Santorum, who most recently stated that his administration would attempt to forcibly divorce legally married same-sex couples.
So while the end of Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign is undoubtedly a positive development for America’s LGBT community, it’s definitely not cause for complacency. To the contrary, our efforts to protect and expand upon the victories we’ve achieved must intensify, because in this election year, our opponents are just getting started.
Note: this op-ed was written for, and initially appeared at, the Advocate.
Screen shot: Andy Towle
OH, funny! Amy Koch is the erstwhile Senate Majority leader in Minnesota who resigned after admitting an “inappropriate relationship” with a staffer, all while being traditionally married. She is also an anti-gay politician, having been a leader of the effort to write marriage discrimination into Minnesota’s constitution. Realizing that gay and lesbians, and our marriages, are the cause of most traditional marriage problems, some of the gays in Minnesota have decided to apologize to Koch for ruining her marriage. Here is their letter:
An Open Apology to Amy Koch on Behalf of All Gay and Lesbian Minnesotans
Dear Ms. Koch,
On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community’s successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an “illicit affair” with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.
We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.
It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of “adultery.”
Forgive us. As you know, we are not church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that “gay marriage” is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.
And finally, shame on us for thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage would have little impact on anyone’s family. We now see that marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.
From the bottom of our hearts, we ask that you please accept our apology.
Truth Wins Out has created a petition to demand that Marcus Bachmann immediately end his harassment of our organization:
Marcus Bachmann, the husband of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, has launched a petty and vindictive campaign to personally harass Truth Wins Out. He is upset that in July TWO exposed his clinic for practicing “ex-gay” therapy. Prior to this disclosure, Bachmann lied to the American people and denied that his office engaged in these backwards and barbaric techniques. The revelation rocked Michele Bachmann’s campaign and became her first major roadblock.
Now that the campaign is foundering, she and Marcus are looking for scapegoats – and have settled on Truth Wins Out. They are spitefully taking aim at TWO’s John Becker, trying to punish him because he went undercover and gathered video evidence of “ex-gay” therapy at the clinic.
Like the bullies they are, Bachmann & Associates is illegally demanding that Becker pay $150 for appointments that he had canceled in accordance with the clinic’s guidelines. Amazingly, Marcus Bachmann personally called Becker this week threatening to send the bogus bill to collections if it was not paid by Friday. Truth Wins Out retained the services of an attorney and steadfastly refuses to be intimidated or pay the fake bill.
Clearly, Marcus Bachmann is angry with Truth Wins Out for exposing his clinic’s fraudulent practices, and is engaging in malicious and vindictive strong-arming for the sole purpose of defaming and discrediting TWO and John Becker.
Stand with us today — demand that Marcus Bachmann end these spiteful and malicious pursuits immediately and stop harming clients with discredited and harmful “ex-gay” therapy.
TWO Demands That Bachmann Stops Petty and Vindictive Threats Over $150 Fraudulent ‘Therapy’ Bill
Burlington, Vt – Truth Wins Out expressed surprise today that Marcus Bachmann personally called the organization demanding $150 for cancelled July sessions of “ex-gay” therapy with a counselor at his office. He threatened that if TWO did not pay him by Friday he would turn the phony bill over to a collection agency.
In July, Truth Wins Out went undercover and exposed Bachmann & Associates for practicing a form of discredited “pray away the gay” therapy. The revelation rocked Michele Bachmann’s presidential campaign. After TWO’s John Becker, who went undercover, had enough videotape evidence to prove that “ex-gay” therapy occurred at Bachmann’s clinic, he called the clinic and cancelled his remaining appointments. Despite widespread circulation of TWO’s video footage, Marcus denied the therapy had taken place.
“I cancelled my remaining appointments in compliance with Bachmann & Associates’ stated procedure,” said John Becker, TWO’s Director of Communications and Development, “yet Marcus Bachmann himself called me and threatened to send the fraudulent $150 ‘bill’ to a collection agency by Friday. I find it odd that Bachmann handled this matter personally rather than through his billing department. This is certainly an unorthodox way of doing business, much like the unethical ‘ex-gay’ therapy offered at his clinic.”
“We call on Marcus Bachmann to immediately stop his petty and vindictive campaign of harassment and threats against our organization,” said TWO’s Executive Director Wayne Besen. “Perhaps, now that Michele’s campaign is foundering, the Bachmanns are frustrated and looking for scapegoats to explain her failure. Truth Wins Out refuses to be intimidated or blackmailed by Bachmann. This bogus bill will not be paid.”
Becker was surprised when he received a voicemail from Bachmann on Monday demanding payment for cancelled sessions which never took place. On Tuesday, he returned Bachmann’s call and spoke with him for nearly seven minutes in the presence of a reporter from the local ABC/FOX affiliate in Burlington. The video of the tense exchange can be viewed at Truth Wins Out’s website.
“We saw firsthand that the ‘ex-gay’ therapy practiced by Bachmann & Associates is unethical and unhealthy for clients,” said Becker. “What goes on in that clinic is rejected by every respected medical and mental health organization in America.”
Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to create a world where LGBT individuals can live openly, honestly and true to themselves. TWO fights anti-LGBT religious extremism, monitors anti-LGBT organizations, documents their lies and exposes their leaders. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
Contact: Wayne Besen, Executive Director
Phone: 917-691-5118
E-Mail: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Contact: John Becker, Director of Communications & Development
Phone: 920-265-6023
E-mail: john@truthwinsout.org
UPDATE: 11/15/11, 3:30pm — I just finished a nearly seven-minute telephone conversation with Marcus Bachmann. A member of the media was there, and a video report will be forthcoming. It will be posted as soon as it becomes available.
Yesterday afternoon I was in a meeting and, of course, had my phone off. After the meeting concluded, I checked my phone and saw that I missed a call from a number I didn’t recognize. Since the mystery caller left a voicemail, I checked it, and my jaw nearly hit the floor when I found out that the mystery caller was, in fact, Marcus Bachmann.
Bachmann was calling in an attempt to collect $150 in no-show fees from two “pray away the gay” appointments I canceled after going through five such sessions with a therapist at his clinic back in June.
Before patients at Bachmann & Associates start services, they’re required to sign a paper acknowledging that they’ve been made aware of the clinic’s no-show policy. According to said policy, patients are assessed a $75 no-show fee for each appointment that they miss without giving prior notification. I always booked the maximum number of appointments in advance that I could (3) in order to avoid suspicion — after all, it was to be a 4-6 month course of treatment — so when I went back to Vermont, I called the clinic to cancel them. However, I didn’t want to give them any kind of a heads up about the story that was about to break in the media, so I said that a member of my immediate family “back home in Wisconsin” (they had seen and photocopied my Wisconsin ID) had had a health crisis, and that I needed to go out of state but didn’t know when I’d be back. On the voicemail I left at the clinic, I told them to cancel all three of my appointments and that I’d schedule my next sessions when I knew when I’d be back in the Twin Cities.
Apparently, instead of cancelling all three appointments as per my request, the receptionist or whomever had the job of fielding voice messages only canceled the first appointment, because two months after the story broke I started receiving bills for $150 (two no-show fees) from Bachmann & Associates. I wasn’t about to have Truth Wins Out fork over another $150 for the clinic’s error, so on November 2nd I called them and very politely contested the fee. Neither the receptionist nor the billing representative with whom I spoke had any idea who I was. The billing representative merely told me that once the fees had been assessed they could only be waived at the therapist’s discretion, so she’d send a message to Timothy Wiertzema asking whether he’d be willing to waive them. She assured me that if Timothy hadn’t personally called me back by the end of the week, I could safely assume he’d agreed to waive the fees.
The rest of the week came and went without any further contact with anyone from Bachmann & Associates, so I assumed the matter was settled. Timothy must have deferred any decision on the matter to Marcus himself, as the following message was left on my phone:
Hello John Becker, this is Doctor Marcus Bachmann (emphasis his); I received a message from our billing department asking if we would write off the two no-show fees for 7/7/11 and 7/12/11. We will not (emphasis his) be writing those off, so you do owe those no-show fees, and we would expect payment as soon as possible, otherwise we will have to turn it over to collections. If you have any questions you can call (651) 379-0444. Thank you.
(NOTE: The phone number Marcus Bachmann provided is the publicly listed phone number for the Bachmann & Associates Lake Elmo office. Were it not publicly available, we would not have included it.)
Either Marcus Bachmann has a lot more time to personally attend to his underlings’ business matters now that his wife’s presidential campaign has tanked, or Truth Wins Out’s undercover investigation remains a very personal issue for him nearly five months later. I’ll be calling Dr. Bachmann back later today. Stay tuned!
They are all smiling because they believe they deserve greater rights than you and I do. Of course, if the tables were turned, we’d never put their rights to a vote, because we have character.
A few minutes ago, somebody posted this picture and quote on Facebook, and I’m not sure how new/old it is, but it so simply encapsulates the worldview of the people in the above video [click to embiggen, of course]:
Presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum appeared Saturday on the radio show of Minnesota “kill the gays” youth preacher Bradlee Dean to endorse so-called sodomy laws, which would imprison all LGBT Americans while sparing millions of misbehaved heterosexuals.
Santorum pointed to the landmark case, Lawrence v. Texas, where the U.S. Supreme Court overturned sodomy laws that were used to imprison gays and lesbians.
“And I stood up from the very beginning back in 2003 when the Supreme Court was going create a constitutional right to sodomy and said this is wrong we can’t do this,” Santorum said. ”And so I stood up when no one else did and got hammered for it. I stood up and I continue to stand up.”
Santorum added, “I do not believe that sexual orientation should be added to hate crimes, but let me be honest, I don’t believe in hate crimes, period.” (Full audio.)
Like Santorum and Dean, Exodus International leaders including Minnesota activist Janet Boynes effectively contend that violence targeting specific minorities should be punished more leniently, if at all.
Wow. Saint Paul and Minneapolis Archbishop John Nienstedt (
Rep. Michele Bachmann’s Wednesday announcement that she is ending her White House bid comes as no surprise. While the Minnesota congresswoman was one of the first GOP candidates to experience a surge in the polls last summer as the party’s base searched frantically for a conservative alternative to Mitt Romney (she even won the Iowa straw poll in August), her campaign had been dogged by a series of high-profile missteps.
Marcus Bachmann, the husband of presidential candidate Michele Bachmann, has launched a petty and vindictive campaign to personally harass Truth Wins Out. He is upset that in July TWO exposed his clinic for practicing “ex-gay” therapy. Prior to this disclosure, Bachmann lied to the American people and denied that his office engaged in these backwards and barbaric techniques. The revelation rocked Michele Bachmann’s campaign and became her first major roadblock.
X affiliate in Burlington. The video of the tense exchange can be viewed at Truth Wins Out’s website.
UPDATE: 11/15/11, 3:30pm — I just finished a nearly seven-minute telephone conversation with Marcus Bachmann. A member of the media was there, and a video report will be forthcoming. It will be posted as soon as it becomes available.
Presidential candidate Sen. Rick Santorum appeared Saturday on the radio show of Minnesota “kill the gays” youth preacher 
