The Senate Judiciary and Public Safety Committee passed a bill Friday afternoon that would put a ban on same-sex marriage in the Minnesota Constitution if voters approve it during the November 2012 elections. Religious leaders spoke in defense of the bill, while supporters of the LGBT community expressed opposition. It passed the committee along party lines with Republicans supporting the measure.

Sen. Barb Goodwin, DFL-Columbia Heights, said, “I will never in this Legislature, will never vote — even if it means I’m voted out — to put language of discrimination in the constitution.”

“I could not live with myself, and those of you who claim to be good Christians, you need to think about what you are doing here,” she added.

But Sen. Dave Thompson, R-Lakeville, said the issue isn’t about discrimination and civil rights: “Marriage isn’t a right. Nowhere in the federal Constitution or the Minnesota Constitution is marriage considered a right.”

Sen. John Harrington, DFL-St. Paul, said the measure does nothing to support the principles the nation was founded on.

“I cannot see in this bill anything that promotes life, anything that promotes liberty — if anything, it seems to restrict liberty. I cannot see anything that will promote the pursuit of happiness,” he said. “It sends a chilling message that it is OK to discriminate. It sends the message that gays in Minnesota are ‘less than.’”

The bill passed and was referred to the Senate Rules Committee.

“This is an exciting first step in this campaign,” Bostrom said in a statement announcing the formation of the “Bostrom for Sheriff” committee. “I am confident that my commitment to professional public service and to the core values of protecting our citizens, partnering with the community, reducing neighborhood crime, practicing fiscal responsibility, and collaborating with other law enforcement agencies are what the citizens expect from their sheriff.”

Bostrom is the son of veteran St. Paul City Council member Dan Bostrom, but is best known for heading up security efforts during last year’s Republican National Convention. Fletcher was critical of security preparations for the national gathering, repeatedly warning that the St. Paul department had failed to recruit enough police officers to ensure that it went off without serious problems.

Fletcher is a polarizing figure. The sheriff’s department drew the ire of social-justice activists last year by infiltrating the (ironically named) RNC Welcoming Committee. A series of police raids in the days leading up to the convention eventually resulted in criminal charges against eight activists who were allegedly plotting to damage property and disrupt the Republican gathering.

The four-term incumbent’s also been at the center of an investigation into the activities of the beleaguered — and now disbanded — Metro Gang Strike Force. Two damning reports released earlier this year alleged that the law enforcement agency routinely seized money from citizens without justification, failed to adequately keep track of its assets and displayed a general disregard for the civil rights of citizens, particularly minorities. The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Department was the fiscal agent for the gang strike force.

In 2006, former St. Paul Police Chief William Finney took on Fletcher in a bruising political contest, but the incumbent ultimately prevailed by just over 1,000 votes.

Dolan said there were no felony arrests and just two gross misdemeanor arrests. “The bottom line with those individuals is that they wanted to be arrested,” he claimed. “I haven’t gotten any complaints about how they were arrested. it was basically uneventful for us.” He characterized the concert-goers as generally well-behaved. “They were rambunctious, but they were not damaging property,” he said. “They were not assaulting anybody. It was basically a big event.”

St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington stated that there were no major security problems in St. Paul on the third day of the convention. “Wednesday was a great day in St. Paul,” he said. “In balance it was a day that really was marked with lack of any major crisis or any major issues in the City of St. Paul at all.”

Harrington also spoke about the use of tear gas and other chemical irritants during the first two days of the convention. Some activists have questioned whether police are providing adequate warning before deploying such tools. “Our policy, and the policy we worked out uniformly with all of the agencies, is that we will announce,” he said. “We will give people an opportunity and direction as to how they can leave the area. … We will then make another announcement typically to say that we are now about to deploy gas, and then gas is deployed.”

There are exceptions to this policy, Harrington noted, when an officer or citizen is being attacked. “Our training generally is that we give verbal commands as we are using force,” he said. “So it would be atypical to have that not happen.”

Protesters blame police for violence that broke out at the conclusion of last night’s protest parade organized by the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. The group’s national organizer, Cheri Honkala, spoke to reporters this morning at Bushville, the temporary encampment set up by activists at 400 Western Ave. in St. Paul. “As a resident of Minnesota, I’m incredibly ashamed,” Honkala said. “I think our security team did a pretty damn good jop keeping the peace yesterday.”

Indeed the march was largely without incident until arriving at the Capitol. There it converged with the Ripple Effect concert where Rage Against the Machine was slated to perform. As documented by Jeff Severns Guntzel in this space, events quickly spiraled out of control with tear gas and explosive sound devices utilized by cops.

Honkala said anarchists, who have been blamed for much of the tumult on the streets of St. Paul during the RNC, were not at fault for last night’s trouble. “No fringe group took away from what happened yesterday,” she said. “It was those guys dressed all in black — I mean the police officers all dressed in black — that took away from our message.”

More than 300 people have been locked up during the first two days of the RNC, but Honkala dismissed the arrests as primarily trumped up allegations. “I highly doubt that they’ll get any convictions from any of these arrests,” she said. “Most of the folks were participating in using their First Amendment rights and practicing their right to assemble.”

Her comments were backed up by others at the press conference. Shamako Noble, an activist from San Jose, California, said police actions actually prevented the crowd from peacefully dispersing last night. “They almost trapped people in,” he said. “It seems to me that you have to justify $50 million somehow. I don’t think it was anything that we actually did.”

At a series of press conferences this week, St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington has defended the tactics utilized by police. “They did a great job in the face of a lot of challenges,” he said after the first day of disturbances. “They did not overreact.”

As this morning’s press conference took place, volunteers were packing up the remnants of Bushville. People filled trash bags and stacked mattresses. A couple couches still sat on the otherwise near empty lot. Honkala was leaving for a funeral in Philadelphia immediately after speaking with the press. But she vowed that the group will be planning more protests down the road to highlight poverty and economic injustice. “We do marches because we don’t have the money for lobbyists, we don’t have the money for billboards,” she said. “All we have is our voices and we will continue to insure that our voices are not taken away from us.”

Harrington also stated that 283 people have been booked into the Ramsey County Jail so far, including 120 on felony arrests, primarily for criminal damage to property and rioting charges. An additional nine RNC-related arrests were made in Minneapolis overnight.

Harrington characterized as a failure the attempts to thwart the RNC from proceeding. “They came here to try and stop the convention, to crash the gates, to stop the buses,” he said. “They failed. They made numerous attempts to crash the gates and never got in.”

When the press conference was opened to questions, Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman questioned the rough treatment of some reporters by police. She and two of her producers, along with an Associated Press photographer, were arrested yesterday. Harrington said he couldn’t comment on the specific situation but defended cops interactions with reporters generally. “If they are in the midst of a riot, we can’t protect them,” he said. “It will be very difficult for us in a moment of that kind of chaos to make those kinds of fine distinctions.”