Marriage bill opponents rally

Posted at 5:30 PM on March 7, 2013 by Tim Pugmire (3 Comments)
Filed under: MN Legislature

Opponents of legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in Minnesota gathered today for a rally at the State capitol.

The group Minnesota for Marriage brought together its members from throughout the state to hear from several like-minded religious leaders and legislators. House and Senate committees have scheduled hearings next week on the marriage bill.

Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, who sponsored last fall's failed constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Minnesota, told the crowd that the battle continues.

"And we have to understand that we are fighting for our children and our culture and our way of life," Limmer said.

Limmer was among three-dozen GOP lawmakers at the rally.

Several opponents of the legislation highlighted what they see as the religious implications of the proposal. Joe Rigney, a professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, said legislators have no authority to re-define an institution invented by God.

"We did not send them here to undermine fundamental institutions of society," Rigney said. "We did not send them to here to perform a social experiment on our children by defining marriage in a way that no society in the history of the world has ever defined it."

Jake Loesch, communications director for the group Minnesotans United, which supports the legislation, said he was disappointed with some of the things he heard at the rally. Loesch said there are also many people of faith who support legalizing same-sex marriage. He also noted that the bill addresses potential religious concerns.

"The legislation that's been introduced has very expansive religious exemptions to ensure that no church or clergy member is ever going to be forced to violate their own convictions or their deeply held religious convictions," Loesch said.

Comments (3)

DEFINITION OF MARRIAGE IN MN.
Fellow Americans
“we the people" have had the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman for all the existence of our country and before, which also is in agreement with Gods teaching in the bible. There is a reason God made the difference in the gender sexes. That is so that a marriage between one man and one women can produce children and provide a good stable environment for those children to develop and grow up having a loving mother and a father forming a family. Each parent has a function in the teaching and development of each child, be it a boy or a girl, providing a stable family environment and good moral teachings. These children will grow up and form their own families and have children of their own forming another generation to carry on the population of the world. That has been God's plan since the beginning of mankind.
Now we have these special interest groups that want to mess up this plan by confusing the definition of marriage. God did not make any provisions for two roosters or two hens or whatever they might be. That plan does not work in nature or in human beings. So "we the people" must now stand up in support of the continued definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman as it is defined today in Minnesota . If these special interest groups want to push for another term that describes how they want to live, such as "a civil union" that gives them the same rights as a married couple but made up of two roosters or two hens, or whatever, that then would be defining that term. but there is no need to redefine marriage in the state of Minnesota.
This is the real world not your distorted political world that we live in and the definition of marriage works just fine in the real world. Leave it alone and force these special interest groups to form their own term and benefit program. They have wasted a lot of our state congress members time and spent a lot of state tax payer dollars that was not needed.

Sincerely

Jerry England
Allis62@frontier.com

Posted by Jerry England | March 8, 2013 8:27 AM

@Jerry, did I miss the day that Minnesota officially became a theocracy?

Please feel free to marry whomever you want in your church, but let’s leave our secular, civil laws free of the religious doctrine that only some people still subscribe to and lack any rational legal basis (let alone the intermediate scrutiny, which discriminatory laws against vulnerable minorities are held to).

And I write this not as an atheist, but as a committed person of faith, whose religious community proudly includes gay couples within the covenant of marriage.

(For what it’s worth, I am also straight, married to the same woman I met the second day of college over 20 years ago, and have two great kids who find Minnesota’s discriminatory laws against our married, gay friends to be completely incomprehensible).

Posted by Ethan | March 8, 2013 11:57 AM

So Eathan, what version of the Bible do you follow? The one that leaves the stuff out that you do not like so it is palatable. We are to love the sinner and not the sin. This is not making things fair and balanced, this is all about poking God and the church in the eye. You can love your gay friends straight to that place that you probably never hear about in whatever touchy feeley church. With so much power on the left side of the aisle, why is there such a great need to screw up traditional marriage. You and others could get the dfl politicians to make this gay arrangement anything you wanted with just as many benefits. It is just what many of you are opposed to, bullying. You have bought into the lie......

Posted by Dan | March 8, 2013 4:12 PM

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