Minnesota Republicans offer constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage

From Senator Dibble: “The archbishop is probably going to try and raise millions of dollars on this. We already saw his DVD campaign last year.”

Given the closeness to the election last fall of the release of the 800,000 DVDs, I think that the Senator meant to say that we saw the archbishop’s campaign DVD, not his DVD campaign.

As I have said before and will say again…the republican party is out of touch with reality. We do not need morality laws in America. We need balanced budgets and well paying jobs not an Iran styled theocracy.

Seeing that these republicans were elected by a majority in their districts, I would be hard pressed to defend the constituents as being truly educated on the difference between constitutional laws and morality laws. Americans should not allow any law or ammendment such as the one described above to ever pass. It would be unconscionable, a slap in the face of our founding fathers.

Democracy! Bah! Whenever I hear that, I reach for my feather boa.

~Allen Ginsberg

What happened to their mandate to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs and our enormous deficit? This obsession by many Republicans to continue their crusade to persecute gay Americans is obscene.

Well I was just over visting our friends at Florida Independent and came across this story. It seems our republican buddies have been shirking their fiscal responsibilities in other states as well. It seems they are allowing their masters to control them in some ridiculous ways!

http://floridaindependent.com/27407/cnn-analysts-slam-farm-photo-bans-as-unconstitutional-claim-factory-farm-conditions-are-americas-secret-shame

We need to get this breed of republicans out of office soon! They WILL destroy all that is America.

Excellent!

This is exactly what we need to save the nation from social meltdown, which would collapse the economy. The morality of every nation is directly related to its economy. We need more leaders like the MN GOP to turn the nations economy from the brink of Obama’s anti-business, anti-morality, meltdown.

@Tim

With all due respect, sir, your tin foil hat is a little tight. I will entertain well composed and educated arguments even when they are contrary to what I hold to be true, but you sir, you continually amaze me with your illogical rants. It seems you exist to merely troll chatrooms. Do you have any other validation in your life other than the ability to lie to, and, alienate people?

John I: you’re the reason I wish this site had “like” buttons for comments.

[...] Republicans offer constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage http://minnesotaindependent.com/8075…-gay-marriage/ [...]

I really don’t think Republicans are going far enough.

The libtards have redefined marriage too much already, so I think it’s time to get back to basics. I’m not believing any of this librul propaganda about women being people. They’re property! And a man should be able to have as much property as he wants. Oh, and brides should have to bring a dowry to get married, like in the good ol’ days.

It’s common sense, people.

Welcome back, Tim! I’ve missed your very amusing comments. It’s like our own comedy central. Just don’t get too hyped-up, the folks in the white coats are standing by ready with the straight jacket.

So, in other words, the GOP’s economic recovery strategy consists of appeasing God with socially conservative legislation. I can’t tell which is more misguided, the amendment or it’s apparent purpose. Either way, here come the middle ages.

BTW, which of the four horsemen pictured above will come out of the closet first?

Praise Jebus, God hates rational public policy, Amen.

Look, the Dutch just celebrated 10 years of gay marriage. After 10 years of gay marriage, there are no longer heterosexual marriages in the Netherlands. There are no more children except gay adoption children being raised for the big gay army with their big gay agenda. All dutch are required, at 18, to try being gay to see if they like it. There is no commerce in the Netherlands anymore because everyone is so gay. In fact, after 10 years of gay marriage, everything Tim claims is true. The Dutch civilization is no more.

Now, some of you sane people may want to visit the Netherlands because it is actually a very nice place.

According to Limmer, “We believe we owe the public the opportunity to be engaged.” Just not gay engaged.

Huh, whaddaya know? They passed a budget that most voters will hate: full of huge cuts to things like the U of M, senior care to keep them out of nursing homes, fare hikes for transit, you name it. Perfect time to whip out the hot button social issue.
2010 was a jobs election! No jobs plan worth a damn has come out of the GOP. So they have to go after the gays to get us riled up and not paying attention. Despicable, and we can’t let the politics of distraction work.
Koch and Zellers are presiding over a session that will soon be a train wreck. They haven’t started conferencing most of their complex (and in some cases fraudulently scored) budget bills, so there will be little time to work with Dayton to avert a special session and various crises.
So in stead of doing the damn work they were sent to St Paul to do, they’ll whip up a gay-bashing extravaganza. Infuriating!!!

Don’t you have any demons to slay Tim. The repugnicans sure know how to overstay their welcome and quickly. H8 is NOT a Minnesota value.

Is anyone at all surprised? They will be pushing every piece of far right social agenda they haven’t been able to get out of committee for the last 40 years while they are in control. Most will be vetoed and for that I am wildly thankful for Dayton as governor. If Emmer had won, Minnesota would be decades recovering.

Those thinking of voting FOR this discriminatory amendment should remember:

“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread.” – Anatole France

Additionally, in its majestic equality, it also forbids gay and straight alike to marry a person of the same sex.

Another distraction from their failed economic policies. Sheesh. Keep talking, Reps, and dig yourselves a deeper hole. I lean toward the Dems, but I dearly want to see some credible smart Rep candidates to balance the debate.

When they came for me there was no one left.

I still have many friends looking for work. This distraction of unconstitutional bills going through committee is a waste of time and money for our state.

Seriously? Man up and deal with the budget issues before you tread on our rights. What is the saying? Oh yeah.

“Take the log out of your own eye before you take the splinter out of somebody else’s.”

[...] Sen. Limmer introduced a bill to put a constitutional amendment on the 2012 ballot to ban gay marriage in Minnes…. If passed, a question would appear on the ballot reading “Shall the Minnesota Constitution [...]

I agree with most everyone here. My partner and I will celebrate our 15th year together as butt buddies and I personally won’t get married until everyone can – just like our friend Brad Pitt. I’ve also moved most of my asset offshore and have an obligation to myself to not pay more than “my” share of taxes to the USA, just like GE.

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ALREADY reviewed their law banning same sex marriage and ALREADY declared it to be constitutional. This amendment would do just one thing: Write discrimination into the constitution. It’s a job killing, unnecessary, big government distraction at a time when we need to be focused on the economy.

Next court up. Watching CA and prop 8 costing millions.

Tim,

I think you nailed it on the head. Those darn gays are collapsing the economy. Let’s review the evidence:

-Homosexual spies are robbing pension funds to pay for their Caribbean vacations.
-Gay Wall Street financiers were responsible for Credit Default Swaps.
-Gay marriages in Massachusetts have directly resulted in home foreclosures in Arizona and California.
-The Gay/Lesbian Credit Card Abuse Institute has been jacking up interest rates on credit cards, forcing unpayable debt loads on millions.
-Transsexuals are in a secret campaign to keep health care costs high. If we could only remove them from their hidden locations of power in the system, we’d all be paying less.

Tim, unless people with a good grounding in Biblical principles of analysis make their voices heard, the gays are going to destroy the country even more than they already have. They’ve gotta be stopped!

Yours in Christ Jesus, Ubermensch of the Known Universe,
Eric

@ChapterandVerse –
I’m glad to hear you missed me. I’m still trying to talk this blog into my own column.

Perhaps you missed the small book I wrote in the commands on this article, detailing why gay-marriage is not discrimination, is unconstitutional and would create a theocracy that would destroy the economy as it has begun to do in other nations like the UK and Canada.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/79185/klobuchar-missing-from-doma-repeal-bill

LINGUISTICS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY

Lying does not make your god happy, Tim.

@Tim,
I’ve given up trying to follow your logic. I can’t do it. Your are the most screwed-up “Christian” I’ve run across in my 66 years. You’re version of Christianity mixed with political delusion is really something – totally baffling and so illogical only you can sort through it. Go drink some cool aid now….

@Tim: I’m pretty sure there’s a Geneva convention against torturing logic as badly you do, but I’m guessing the way you vote you probably ignore it.

@Eric

“-Transsexuals are in a secret campaign to keep health care costs high. If we could only remove them from their hidden locations of power in the system, we’d all be paying less.”

I’m sorry, you got me there. My monthly hormone replacement therapy costs three Christian babies their medicine. And their souls. Which fuel my evil magic.

No one reads your psycho-babble “books” Tim.

Katie B.,

(lol)

I’m assuming that you get your hormones FROM the Christian babies? This is what evil witches do when they’re not making cauldrons of homosexual-temptation-potion to slip into the drinks of pastors.

Eric,

Yes, actually. Surprised you can get 10 days worth from one Christian infant. ;)

I am willing to bet that the national GOP is going to add anti-transgender discrimination to its platform ahead of the 2012 election. Their base is primarily engaged by discrimination against those who are different from them.

@ChapterandVerse-
My logic is actually quite simple.

I’m for freedom and you are for slavery.
I’m for individual rights and you against them.
I’m for economic growth and you for economic decline.

The evidence for my reasoning is not dependent on my religion. Regardless of my religion, anyone that takes an honest look at the facts will come to the same conclusions that I have.

@Tim

You are for delusion and we are for the truth.

You are for oppression and we are for equality.

You are for exploitation and we are for community.

You cloak your lack of morality with a book, and we have morality that does not need a list of thou shalt nots to know that we need to treat people with humanity and respect.

I could do this all day.

Tim,

You are deluded.

@Katie B.
You are for hiding and denying the truth, I’m for making the truth known
You are for inequality and discrimination, I’m for equal rights
You are for central economic social planning which destroys wealth, increases poverty and economic decline, just as Obama’s policies have done, I’m for economic freedom which encourages and rewards hard work and innovation which result in economic growth and prosperity.

You cloak of morality has no foundation and is built on sand. As you know, the Lord is at work in you and His work will be shown to be great. You are valuable to Him, He has made that clear to me.

On another subject, if anyone is angry or has an issue or question about Christianity that they would like to ask someone that can defend the faith; this is your opportunity to ask while avoiding a personal encounter. Don’t hold back, I can handle, let it out and get it off your chest.

Tim,

This is a lie: “You cloak of morality has no foundation and is built on sand.”

Is it possible for you to even imagine that people can lead moral lives outside of your little church?

Your book is no more real than King Arthur and the round table. Around the year 500 there was an Arthur but there never was a Camelot or a round table.

Now having actual history that is recorded for all future time the people who wrote this bill will be remembered as bigots and fools.

You have no vision as you are stuck in the past with fables and exaggerations.

The claims that Tim’s side have to any kind of equality went right out the window and butt over teakettle when the Iowa GOP passed this brown steamer as part of their party platform for 2012:

“We support an amendment to both the U. S. and Iowa constitutions that states that all marriages should be traditional one natural male and one natural female, omitting transgendered.”

When you tell an entire class of people that you think they cannot get married, PERIOD, you are for inequality, hatred and destruction.

@Eric –
Would you dare to take another try at explaining your morality, defending my argument that it has no foundation and is built on sand – rather than attempting to disregard my claim by calling me a liar?

@Paul V –
Assuming you are referring to the bible as my ‘book’, your claims are preposterous and completely foolish at best. There is more historical evidence in the life of Christ than there is proof that our entire family trees’ ever existed. The reality of Jesus Christ or more real then you and I are.

The ‘book’ that contains the collection of stories about the life of Christ has been proven to be completely accurate through thousands of years of critics and historical finds of old text books and centuries of old cities and land marks.

On top of that, it contains stories that have yet to take place, and it speaks about what is happening right now in this time in history, which makes it relevant – active and alive – for our lifetime. Furthermore, the fact that it contains future events and those events are quickly unfolding, is the most exciting part – because that means that it is even more relevant today than it was in the past.

At this point I think for all the times I’ve said the words “I don’t think so, Tim,” the universe may be under the misapprehension that I’m Al Borland…

I don’t think so, Tim.

But that requires you to look at the Bible as a work shaped by geopolitical history rather than a work of Absolute Truth – and that’s too scary for you. It’s too bad, because the real answers are there.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

You took the blue pill.

@Katie B.
Banning gay-marriage does not stop anyone from getting married in a private ceremony or creating a legal and binding agreement between each other, nor is it discrimination or inequality or hatred or destructive. It is protective of the family, the foundation of wellbeing of every society.

It will be a glorious day, when He opens your eyes to the wonders of His love for you and you will need to remind yourself of this every day as the people you thought loved you turn on you, almost overnight. Weigh the cost, give it deep consideration, because it is not going to be easy and it will take a tremendous determination to see it through and complete your transformation so that you can fulfill what he has called you to. You are a lucky person to have found this favor with the King, just as Esther did. He will continue to reveal Himself to you as you read the Word. You will be found. He knows exactly where you are and is watching over you each day. Talk to Him and cast your anxiety on Him.

Stop. Hitting. On. Me.

Tim,

You wrote,

“Would you dare to take another try at explaining your morality, defending my argument that it has no foundation and is built on sand – rather than attempting to disregard my claim by calling me a liar?”

When I offered an explanation the first time you claimed that I didn’t. There it was, you read it, and then claimed, bizarrely, that I hadn’t provided one. How else am I to interpret your response?

Now, you’re claim against Katie B. is tantamount to a lie for the following reason. Presumably, someone as smart and educated as Katie B. can reasonably be assumed to have a thought-through foundation for her moral outlook and beliefs. Nevertheless, you claim “her cloak of morality has no foundation and is built on sand.” There’s a kind of delusional solipsistic arrogance at work in such a claim, a blind belief that you’re the only one possessed of an understanding of how the world works and how we should be in it.

Onward…

If you begin with the assumption that any moral system outside of that believed by YOU has no foundation, then there’s no point in us discussing the foundations of morality. You’ll simply arrive at the conclusion you started with, which is your tendency. My fear is that arguments and evidence don’t matter to you, and there’s a ton of past correspondence on MN Independent to back up that observation.

I should also caution:

Merely because you disagree with a particular foundation or framework for morality, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For example, I think the basis for your moral views is profoundly flawed and inadequate (the Bible), but I don’t doubt that you have a basis, a foundation, for your moral viewpoint.

If you are capable of thinking critically about things that are outside of your experience, then here goes, one last time.

A summary of my moral outlook:

-Naturalistic: There is no supernatural source of morality. We have to take the world as we find it.

-Consequentialist: Simply put, we learn from our behaviors about what works and what doesn’t.

-Reason allied with compassion as the core of morality.

-Human happiness, well-being and continual social/personal evolution as ends: Humans are not to be treated as means, but as ends, and these are three pillars of those ends.

-Meta-ethical progress: morality isn’t something found once written on a stone tablet (a barbaric, illiterate view that’s beneath us as a species at this point in time), but evolves, deepens, continually intertwines with learned experience, science, inquiry in general, imagination and art.

Two examples of moral statements that advance our understanding of what an ethical system can and should be:
—Humanist Manifesto 2000: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=main&page=manifesto
–The Extropian Principles 3.0: http://www.maxmore.com/extprn3.htm

Much more could be said, but this is the basic view of the moral foundation to which I subscribe.

@Eric –

It’s just really amazingly boring having Tim turn every LGBT news item into a sermon at this point…

Carefull everyone, you will go crazy if you try to reason with someone such as Tim whose only validation in life is to lie to and demean other people. He literally has nothing that gives his life meaning. Tim will respond to any insult or challenge with a pre written diatribe filled with blatent perversions of the bible.

In other words he is a troll troll.

And all the MN Repubs are trying to do with this amendment is hide the fact that they have nothing of substance to offer their constituants except fear and oppression.

… disgusted…. Republicans are experts at brainwashing. The only reason they pursue these ridiculous and oppressive laws are to pander to a demographic that they themselves created, the religious right, funded by the corporate cows. Their days must be numbered, however. I don’t see how they plan on convincing voters that they’ve accomplished anything worthwhile.

@ Ali

The extreme religious right is an expert on brainwashing. I ache for the days of real republicans that can debate the real issues of economics, jobs, healthcare. Instead of pushing religious belief on the public.

@ Tim

I’d love for your to cite a few Bible verses that speak out against homosexuality. I can guarantee you take them out of context.

Minnesota Republicans proved today that as a party they do not care about justice, only pandering to their right-wing base that represents the extremes of hate and greed. If the definition of marriage is personal, then making one and only one of those definitions bear legal rights and responsibilities is a gross violation of the First Amendment.

all this will do is pit neighbor against neighbor……..3yrs later in CA, and there are LONG TIME neighbors who NO LONGER speak to one another….it will do NOTHING but Cause HARD Bitter feelings….and add your state to the list of Bigots/and discriminators in History ….is that want you want MN?

——————————————————————————–

I live in CA now and can tell you that the passage of Prop 8 did nothing to resolve our budget mess. All it did was create a greater schism between people in our state. Do you really want that for Minnesota? My connection there is that I lived there for many years after college and thought this state was above this kind of narrowmindedness and bigotry. If this passes, you’ll make Orange County look like the Bay Area!