Allen Quist. Photo: YouTube

Former state legislator Allen Quist has announced his campaign to challenge Rep. Tim Walz in Minnesota’s First Congressional district. A once-outspoken figurehead of the conservative Christian movement, he’s now promising a retooled campaign that will focus more on “Tea Party” issues than on social issues targeted by the religious right. 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.

In November, Quist told MinnPost that he his campaign will focus less on concerns like opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion this time around. “[T]he issues that are the top priorities have changed,” said Quist. “Politics is always a moving target.”

Religious right connections

If there’s an effort to put some distance between Quist and religious-right issues, his close and continuing ties to religious right causes and leaders may hinder his progress. The Quist campaign hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment regarding those ties.

“I recommend all information that Eagle Forum publishes, which is superb,” Quist said on Phyllis Schlafly’s radio program on Oct. 17 of this year. Schlafly, known as the grandmother of the religious right, wrote the foreword to Quist’s 2002 book, “Fed Ed: The New Federal Curriculum and How It’s Enforced.”

In August, Quist appeared on the radio program of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania, an anti-gay, anti-pornography group tied to the American Family Association.

As recently as 2003, Quist spoke at a “Ten Commandments Rally” with U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, then a state senator, and Minnesota Family Council president Tim Prichard protesting the unlawfulness of posting religious scriptures on government property.

Currently, he’s a speaker for Lutherans for Life, an anti-abortion group, where his expertise is listed as creationism.

And on Friday, Quist was on James Dobson’s Family News on Focus, sharing the air with a representative of the Minnesota Family Council, discussing marriage and the health reform bill being debated in the U.S. Senate.

Quist’s church, the Evangelical Lutheran Synod, holds some controversial views, including the belief that women should be subservient to men. The ELS’ website states that, since 1990, its official teaching includes: “The purpose of the wife’s submitting to her husband and of the woman’s being submissive within the Christian congregation is also to carry out a beautiful plan, viz., the establishment of a marriage that not only lasts but is also a wonderful harmony, and the establishment of an orderly and harmonious fellowship within the congregation.”

Quist caught quite a bit of flak for a similar statement made to the Twin Cities Reader in 1994: “The fact then that traditionally you do have situations where the husband has been recognized as the head of the home is probably a natural thing, probably based in genetics, just like everything else is.”

Christian values in government

Quist was elected to the Minnesota House in 1982 just as the religious right was gaining influence in the Republican party. He told the Washington Post in 1985, “I don’t know how to gauge it, but I can say this: At the last [Republican] convention, the Christian right was able to do virtually anything it wanted to.”

He gained some fame in the late 1980s, as a state legislator, for bold conservative stances. In the 1988 legislative session, he racked up a cumulative 30 hours on the House floor speaking about sex. He railed against what he he saw as the evils of homosexuality and sex education in the schools. He tried to get a counseling center for gays and lesbians at Mankato State University shut down. “He alleged that Mankato State University was encouraging the spread of AIDS by sponsoring a counseling center for gays, comparing it to a center for the Ku Klux Klan,” wrote the Star Tribune’s Dane Smith in 1994.

When that failed, Quist entered an adult bookstore in Mankato looking to see if anyone was engaged in sexual activity in order to have it shut down.

Quist says he takes a literal interpretation of the Bible. He told Smith in 1994 that the Earth was created “over a very short period of time” and that God plays “an active role in intervening in human history.”

He has also written a number of books. In “The Abortion Revolution,” Quist said, “Can there be any doubt that all on-demand abortions are first-degree murder? … Because abortion is a genuine evil (except when used to save the mother’s life), it must be legally restrained.”

“If our nation would return to Christian ethical codes, the abortion revolution would come to an end and many of the other evils mentioned would be largely restrained as well” and “no improper mixing of church and state occurs when Christian ethics are followed by the state,” he wrote.

Quist versus Carlson

In the 1990s, Quist challenged and eventually won the Republican Party’s endorsement for governor over GOP incumbent Arnie Carlson. Quist felt Carlson was be too liberal on religious right issues — particularly gay rights and abortion. Dubbed “Quistian” by the media, he generated headlines cross-country as newspapers touted him as a religious right candidate who stood up to moderation within the Republican party.

Quist told the Star Tribune at the time that among the campaign issues that spurred him to challenge his fellow Republican was, “The teaching of family values in schools, including chastity for unmarried people.”

In 1994, during the height of media attention on Quist, he told CNN, “Religious people are looking for a voice, and without me, they have no voice in Minnesota.”

Quist went after his opponent with an attack mailer in the summer of 1994 saying — incorrectly — that Carlson supports “abortion on demand, even through the ninth month of pregnancy” and that he was “supporting homosexual marriages.”

Landing the GOP endorsement over a sitting Republican governor sparked a media frenzy rivaling those by fellow conservative Christian Michele Bachmann today, including stories in the New York Times and CNN. But it wasn’t enough to unseat Carlson, who trounced Quist in the primary.

Running again

Quist’s statement about retooling his campaign to emphasize Tea Party issues may be a calculated maneuver. But earlier in his career he said politics isn’t his strongest suit. In the 1994 Star Tribune profile on him and his family, Dane Smith reported that legislators who worked with Quist in the capitol said he was “something of a loner in the Legislature, preferring to socialize with lobbyists and activists who opposed abortion rather than with his colleagues. He did little to build the personal contacts and rapport that is crucial to enactment of legislation.”

“He agrees that his character was not well-suited to the back-slapping and tending to the narrow needs of a legislative district,” Smith continued.

Quist agreed with that assessment. “I’m much more at home running for statewide office,” he said. “I was never that interested in parochial issues, in bringing home the bacon.”

The Monsons, a lesbian couple raising a daughter in Rochester, Minn., were denied family membership since they are not legally married in Minnesota. While they hold a Canadian marriage certificate, Minnesota law doesn’t give them that ability. They sued the health club under Minnesota’s Human Rights Act, which outlaws discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in housing, accommodations and employment.

In November, Olmsted County Judge Kevin Lund found for the health club but also issued a scathing rebuke of its policies. A heated comments section at the Rochester Post-Bulletin demonstrates widely disparate views on the merits of the appeal.

One unmarried man, along with several other commenters, took issue with the lawsuit and the responses are indicative of the balance of rights the case presents.

“OMG people give it up, if my girlfriend and I with 3 kids (2 hers and 1 mine) cannot get a family membership because we are not married why should two unmarried lesbians??? The judge was right to dismiss the case and the attorney is wrong for taking their money and wasting the courts time!”

Another commenter responded, “Cuz u can go today and get a marriage license and get the family membership rates, and their family can never get the family membership rates. The RAC needs to get into the 21st century and treat all families equally and with respect. If Rochester’s northgate health club, Family Y, and Mayo’s healthy living center can do it, so can the RAC.”

Indeed, that is the crux of the argument. Even Judge Lund, who rejected the Monsons’ argument, noted the harsh nature of the policy and the laws. Calling it “anachronistic,” he called the health club’s policy an “unrealistically narrow definition of family” that “fails to recognize the underlying stability and commitment of the Monsons’ relationship,” a relationship that he said functions “as a loving family unit and would otherwise be married or have entered into a permissible legal domestic partnership if allowed by our Legislature.”

The Christian websiteLifeSiteNews.net first reported on Nov. 28 that, according to the church’s website, Father Leo Tibesar was planning on performing same-sex commitment ceremonies in the church — similar to those of heterosexual marriages. In fact, the text on Cabrini’s website was from a 1994 “Statement of Reconciliation” to the LGBT community outlining steps the parish would take to welcome them. In particular, LifeSite took issue with this part of the lengthy statement: “Publicly bless the relationships of a same sex couple after the couple completes a process of discernment similar to that completed by heterosexual couples before marriage.” It was followed by an asterisk that read “not being implemented at this time.”

But Lifesite fanned the flames by opening with this paragraph: “St. Frances Cabrini church, of the St. Paul and Minneapolis archdiocese, has announced on their website that they are ready to “bless” homosexual partners.” The website also decried Tibesar’s “role in the homosexual political movement within the Church,” and that the church will make known it’s “commitment to the homosexual activist agenda.”

LifeSite’s admonishments of Cabrini’s website soon took hold among Christian blogs. The Creative Minority Report wrote, “A Catholic priest in Minnesota announced that he’s ready to bless homosexual partners and repudiated the Church for its teaching of sexual oppression.” Calling it a scandal, A Faithful Rebel wrote, “This priest and perhaps a good number of his parish are now in open rebellion against the Church’s teachings and cannot be allowed to continue this without a response from the Church’s heirarchy… I strongly urge readers to use the contact information at the end of this article to contact the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis and strongly (but respectfully) request that the proper action be taken at once against Fr. Tibesar.”

The Archdiocese looked into the matter and released a statement last week. “Various bloggers and websites have reported that Father Leo Tibesar, of Saint Frances Cabrini Parish in Minneapolis, announced his intention to bless same sex marriages,” the statement read. “Those reports are not true. Father Tibesar has never blessed a same-sex marriage nor does he intend to do so, which would be a violation of his priestly vows and state.”

Archdiocese spokester Dan McGrath told LifeSite that Tibesar wasn’t aware of the content on that page of the website. The statement of reconciliation was made in 1994; Tibesar did not join St. Frances Cabrini until late 2006.

After meeting with outgoing Archbishop Harry Flynn, Tibesar agreed to take the objectionable statement off the church website.

The statement that so offended LifeSite and Catholic bloggers is as follows:

STATEMENT OF RECONCILIATION

We, the members of St. Frances Cabrini Parish, claim as our own the words of the Apostle Paul. “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female: for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)

As members of one body we are grieved by the separation of many of those Catholics who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, transgender or bisexual from the Catholic Church. We are aware of the centuries of oppression that these brothers and sisters have suffered at the hands of civil and religious authorities. We are aware of recent attempts by our bishops to label our brothers and sisters as “objectively disordered,” and to fight against their being granted their full civil rights.

We are also aware that these brothers and sisters have walked with us in our faith throughout the centuries. They have served the Church in every capacity, from the most humble to the most exalted. Despite the hostility they have encountered, they have by their actions proven to be true lovers of Jesus. In being honest about their sexual identity, they have embraced a difficult cross.

With this history in mind we commit ourselves and our community to:

- Reach out to the gay/lesbian community, encouraging them to join our parish;

- Regularly publish our welcome in the gay press;

- Promise to educate ourselves about gay/lesbian issues and work to overcome stereotypes;

- Include a gay/lesbian perspective in catechesis at all levels, including elementary school age;

- Support lesbians and gay men in ways that promote stable, healthy relationships;

- Publicly bless the relationships of a same sex couple after the couple completes a process of discernment similar to that completed by heterosexual couples before marriage; *

- Stand willing to accept qualified, openly gay or lesbian priests or lay ministers;

- Zealously work for and guard the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, knowing that all of our civil rights are compromised when theirs are;

- Pray for greater understanding and acceptance of gay, and lesbian people in official Church teaching;

- Encourage other parishes to become publicly reconciled with the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual community.

* Not being implemented at this time.

Approved August 1994