Lgbt

Former state legislator and conservative Christian figurehead Allen Quist says his campaign to unseat U.S. Rep. Tim Walz will focus not on the social-conservative issues he’s targeted in the past but on “Tea Party” issues. But during the last few months, he had been working closely with some of the religious right’s top leaders as he’s done throughout much of his 27-year political career.

The Stonewall DFL, the LGBT caucus within the DFL, voted this weekend to endorse Matt Entenza for governor in 2010. It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise: Stonewall has endorsed Entenza in every campaign he’s run since his first campaign for the Minnesota House in 1994.

A meeting of Twin Cities Quakers has decided to stop signing marriage certificates until all couples in Minnesota are allowed to marry. The decision, made in November, was a topic of Minnesota Public Radio’s All Things Considered on Monday.

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis is bucking a trend among Minnesota’s Lutheran congregations — it decided to increase “benevolence” payments to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America because of an August vote to allow the rostering of gay and lesbian pastors in committed relationships.

Just in time for Black Friday, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group, has released a shopping guide that ranks hundreds of businesses on whether their policies support LGBT employees. Many of Minnesota’s top companies — including Target, Imation and General Mills — made the list this year.

More than a dozen Lutheran congregations in Minnesota have vowed to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) after a vote in Minneapolis this summer to allow gay and lesbian pastors in committed relationships to serve as clergy. The fifteen churches will join a new denomination called Lutheran CORE and leave the ELCA, the [...]

As noted here Monday, social conservatives — distracted by concerns over abortion and the House health care reform bill — missed key provisions in the bill that benefit LGBT Americans. One group that apparently overlooked the measures, the Minnesota Family Council, confirms that assessment.

While abortion politics dominated conservative opposition to the health care reform package that barely passed the U.S. House on Saturday evening, several measures in the bill that are beneficial to LGBT Americans largely went unnoticed — especially by conservatives.

Sen. Al Franken spoke at a Senate hearing on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on Thursday. ENDA, which is vociferously opposed by the religious right, would make it illegal to fire somebody because of their sexual orientation. Franken sits on the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions committee which held the first hearing the bill has [...]

Friday was historic for LGBT Americans as President Obama signed into law a hate crimes bill that includes sexual orientation and gender identity. But some among Minnesota’s religious right didn’t receive the news warmly, saying the law will bring the wrath of God down on America, that Obama is an “anti-Christian radical” and that the bill was a plot by “homosexuals” to silence Christians.