signs.jpgEach year, OutFront Minnesota organizes the justFair Lobby Day at the State Capitol to bring LGBT people and their friends and supporters together with their legislators. Each lobby day features a Rally for Fairness that attracts thousands of people. In 2004, the rally had 4,000 attendees, and 5,000 people attended last year. The rally is the second largest LGBT event in Minnesota, second only to Twin Cities Pride, which draws more than  300,000 attendees from across the Midwest. It is also one of the largest statewide LGBT political events in the nation. This year’s justFair lobby day and rally will be Thursday.

The rally this year will feature Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie; Jennifer Chrisler, executive director of Family Pride; Lori Lippert, a state employee who testified for state domestic partner benefits; the Rev. Malcom Himschoot of Plymouth Congregational Church and remarks from openly gay and LGBT supportive legislators. The Calliope Women’s Chorus will perform. The chorus is the oldest LGBT performing-arts organization in the Twin Cities and  — celebrating its 30th anniversary this year — the second-oldest feminist chorus in the United States.

OutFront’s justFair Lobby Day always promises political drama, whether it be counter-protestors or mishaps by politicians. In 2005, Rep. Michele Bachmann, then a state senator was photographed sitting behind bushes on the Capitol lawn. Blog and media reports speculated that she was covertly viewing the LGBT rally. Just an hour earlier, Bachmann had tried to force a floor vote in the Minnesota Senate on a constitutional amendment outlawing domestic partnerships, civil unions and same-sex marriage as LGBT people and supporters were lobbying their legislators, a move that even some Republican legislators thought was poor timing.

This year, the Rally for Fairness promises to be large and controversial. Several pro-LGBT equality measures are working their way through the legislature, including hospital visitation for domestic partners and domestic-partner benefits for state employees. OutFront will be circulating a petition asking Gov. Tim Pawlenty to sign the pro-LGBT equality legislation. At the same time, Republican legislators have reintroduced a constitutional amendment banning domestic partnerships, civil unions and same-sex marriage.

OutFront’s justFair Lobby Day will begin at 9 am with lobby training, and the Rally for Fairness will start at noon on the Capitol lawn.

Photo by Anne Hodson.