Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, briefly flirted with folk hero status in the LGBT community and beyond last week after comments he made in opposition to an anti–gay marriage amendment went viral. He asked, “How many gays must God create before we accept that he wants them around?” And with that increased attention, Simon has drawn the ire of religious right figures who have called him “evil” and a “blasphemer” who should be immediately removed from office.

Video of Rep. Simon’s remarks have generated just under 500,000 views on YouTube:

That footage drew harsh criticism from Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network and Exodus International, a group that says it can convert gays and lesbians to heterosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.

Exodus International’s Randy Thomas questions Simon’s theology at the 9:30 mark:

“This is their life and they want your children,” said James White of the Alpha and Omega Ministries. “They can’t have them themselves so they’ll get them any way they can.”

“Those that are evil generally don’t sound evil,” he said of Simon’s remarks:

“Give me a stinkin’ break. That is blasphemy, Mr. Simon,” said Bradlee Dean of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide. In response to Simon’s remarks saying he believes God created gays and lesbians, Dean compared LGBT people to thieves, liars, adulterers and fornicators.

He mocked the idea that homosexuality may be an innate quality. “‘Oh, I was born this way. I can’t help myself.’ Really? Then you belong in jail.”

Jake McMillian, Dean’s sidekick, called for Simon to be removed from office. “He deserves to be kicked out of office and dethroned from his position.”

Dean agreed: “Immediately! He is violating your constitution, he is violating his oath, he is violating the God he’s supposed to serve and the people that he serves.”

He continued, “Blasphemy! But here the homosexuals are praising him. This guy is reprobate. He is off the radar folks. You need to be removed! Yes, I said it from the pulpit, you need to be removed!”

Here’s audio of Dean’s full remarks:

simondean

Along party lines, the House Civil Law Committee passed a bill Monday to put a constitutional amendment that would restrict marriage in Minnesota to one man and one woman before voters. In a hearing in which religious leaders far outnumbered legal testifiers, emotions ran high as the father of a gay soldier killed in Afghanistan appealed to veterans to oppose the amendment.

The committee heard several hours of testimony, including that of Bishop Bob Battle of the Berean Church of God in Christ. Battle said, “I don’t consider gay marriages as the same as whites not being allowed to marry blacks.”

“Gay marriage advocates have attempted to hijack the civil rights movement,” he said. “I know what civil rights are, and gays in America have all the civil rights as anyone else.”

He pointed out the right to vote, the right to housing, the right to employment and “the right to ride in the front of the bus.”

Despite that testimony, 40 states currently allow discrimination against LGBT people in employment, housing and public accommodations.

Battle added, “God gave marriage as a gift to Adam and Eve.”

On the other side, Jeff Wilfarht used his time in front of the community not to rally the support of legislators but to urge veterans to oppose the amendment. His son, Cpl. Andrew Wilfahrt, died in an attack in Afghanistan and was an openly gay man before he enlisted (and, despite “don’t ask don’t tell,” was open with his unit, according to his family).

Wilfarht told the committee that he realized none of the supporters of the amendment would change their minds, so he appealed to the veterans of Minnesota to oppose the amendment.

“Veterans living in Minnesota are not going to take kindly to tampering with the constitution they fight to defend,” he said, “with an iron-clad exclusion and removal of a civil right to a minority group.”

“The constitution is being toyed with. There are shenanigans afoot.”

While testifiers in support of the amendment repeated that marriage has had the same definition for all of history, some members of the DFL had problems with that revisionism.

“The definition of marriage used to be about property: Me, as property passed from my father to my husband,” said Rep. Melissa Hortman, DFL-Minneapolis. “The definition of civil marriage has evolved over time — and thank God it has.”

She added, “I appeal to you not to put the question of fundamental civil rights to a majority vote.”

Rep. John Lesch, DFL-St. Paul, said that just like other hot-button-issue ballot measure of the past, such as abortion, the proposed amendment will not stand the test of time.

“Members you know that this is a hot issue before the voters today, and maybe it’ll get you some votes in the election a year and a half from now,” he said. “This thing is going to end up getting repealed, just like Prohibition.”

Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, said this appears like an attempt to “enshrine religious beliefs” into the Minnesota Constitution, especially considering almost all the testifiers in support were religious leaders.

“I’m Jewish. Eating pork or shellfish is not allowed in my tradition, but I would never ask the government to impose that on our fellow citizens.”

He got down to brass tacks with the committee members. “How much of homosexuality is nature versus nurture? Is this just another lifestyle choice like skateboarding or gardening?”

He referenced a testifier who said “sexuality and sexual orientation are a gift from God.” He said, “I think that’s true, and I would ask everyone on this committee, if that’s true, if it’s even possibly true, what does that do to the moral force of your argument?”

He continued, “How many more gay people does God have to create before we accept that God actually wants them around?”

That question generated shouts of approval and applause from the crowd gathered in the committee room.

“I truly believe that in a generation, if we pass this, that generation and maybe sooner will judge us all very harshly,” he concluded.

The bill passed the committee along party lines by a vote of 10 to 7.

Update: The UpTake has footage of Rep. Steve Simon’s testimony:

Republicans in the Minnesota House have included an amendment to the health and human services omnibus bill that would ban the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in the state of Minnesota because legislators believe it to be in violation of the 10th Amendment to the United States Constitution. On Wednesday night, Republicans argued that “Obamacare” would “eviscerate” state sovereignty, while DFLers made comparisons to the Confederacy and the arguments used by secessionists during the Civil War. One legislator even proposed changing the state song to “Dixie.”

The amendment was offered by Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe. “This amendment is the Freedom of Choice in Health Act,” he said. “This bill attempts to say that Minnesota is not going to cooperate with imposing a penalty to purchase a particular product without a penalty being imposed.”

In a bid to keep the discussion civil, Gruenhagen urged the Republicans in the body to refrain from using “Obamacare.” “As we discuss this, there are those in the chamber who are offended by the use of the term ‘Obamacare.’ Please use Affordable Care Act, or as I sometimes refer to it, the Unaffordable Care Act.”

But few listened to Gruenhagen’s suggestion.

Rep. Kathy Lohmer, R-Lake Elmo, said, “Republicans have opposed ‘Obamacare’ for the simple reason it will destroy jobs. This [amendment] will allow doctors the freedom to practice the way they see fit.”

Rep. Doug Wardlow, R-Eagan, said the Affordable Care Act would “destroy the fabric of our system.”

“The Affordable… whatever it’s called, is a terrible piece of legislation that will eviscerate the private health insurance industry in America… It will push us past a tipping point where the federal government will come to usurp any meaningful role for state governments in our dual sovereignty system,” he said. “That’s why this amendment is so very important.”

Later he said, “For decades our country has been walking down a road to a cliff. What is the cliff? The cliff is the end of state sovereignty. The cliff is turning the 9th and 10th amendments into meaningless recitation that are ignored wholly.”

He added, “This is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will find it unconstitutional, but we don’t need to wait for the Supreme Court to tell us what we know is true.”

But, the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act is very much an undecided issue. Republicans on the House floor offered court decisions in Florida and Virginia as evidence to back their claims about the unconstitutional nature of “Obamacare,” but did not mention the two cases that did rule it constitutional: Thomas More Law Center v. Obama and Liberty University v. Geithner.

DFLers made that point clear at several moments in the floor debate, but their strategy seemed to be to tie the ban on the Affordable Care Act to the 10th Amendment battles waged during the Civil War and Civil Rights Eras.

Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, compared the amendment offered by Gruenhagen to those arguments used by the South during those periods of American history.

“Reasonable people can disagree with the Affordable Care Act,” he said. “But what this amendment proposes is crazy, I just have to tell you.”

“We have a tradition in this country that we don’t just opt out of laws that we think are unconstitutional,” he added. “We had this debate in the 1860s with the Civil War. We had it in 1960s with civil rights.”

Simon said he didn’t want to assert that Republicans were arguing those same issues — that of slavery and discrimination — but that the 10th Amendment argument had been used in those cases as well.

“Everyone here wants equality. I don’t want to criticize anyone’s motives,” he said. “But this is procedurally indistinguishable from the arguments made by southern segregationists.”

“For us on any issue to simply opt our of laws we don’t like, it is an act of rebellion on par with Fort Sumter in the Civil War. To say we are going to essentially break away from the union on this issue I think is shortsighted. It makes us look, as a state, backward and ridiculous.”

Rep. Steve Gottwalt, R-St. Cloud, disagreed with that sentiment. “To call it crazy, Rep. Simon, is to argue that the U.S. Constitution and Minnesota Constitution are are in fact crazy, ridiculous or silly. That, to me, is frankly offensive,” he said. “Members we are not talking about seceding from the union.”

But it was Golden Valley Democrat Rep. Ryan Winkler who hammered home the comparison to Southern segregationists.

“Using the 10th Amendment is really a bogus argument. And it’s obviously very passionately followed by certain members of activist organizations in the United States today, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is legal hogwash.”

He said he had planned to offer an amendment to the amendment that “would make the official state song of Minnesota ‘Dixie,’ and take down that portrait of Abraham Lincoln and replace it with Jefferson Davis.”

He added, “That’s what this amendment stands for, and it has no place in this building.”

The amendment passed by 71 ayes to 60 nays and is included in the health and human services omnibus bill that also passed by a similar margin.

Rep. Mary Kiffmeyer of Big Lake and Sen. Warren Limmer of Maple Grove unveiled the Republican plan to overhaul the state’s voting system at a press conference on Wednesday. Among the proposed changes are the elimination of vouching, implementation of a photo identification system, a ban on health care workers assisting voters in the booth, and massive changes to the recount process. Most of the changes reflect complaints by the conservative group Minnesota Majority, which Kiffmeyer ran several years ago.

Kiffmeyer said that the new system unveiled today has stood up to court challenges.

“This is a concept, modeled on the Indiana voting system which has been ruled constitutional by the Indiana Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court,” she said. “This is a system that I think is good for Minnesotans.”

Limmer added that they are proposing the changes because Minnesotans increasingly don’t trust the voting system. “I am excited about being a part of this major revision of Minnesota election law,” he said. “We hear from citizens who are growing suspicious of our election process.”

Among the changes proposed in the bill include the requirement of photo identification for voters. Under the bill, an electronic registration system would be set up that would scan IDs at the polling place. Voters would then be required to sign a receipt that would be printed off.

“This is a receipt that has value and meaning,” Kiffmeyer said. “I think the court case that was in the news in regards to voter receipts… This addresses that concern that was well in the news and well talked about.”

Kiffmeyer was referring to a petition filed by the Republican Party to the Minnesota Supreme Court in the Minnesota gubernatorial recount which tried to force counties to count names on the voter roster instead of voter receipts. The court rejected the GOP case.

Kiffmeyer said that the costs of setting up an electronic voting system haven’t been determined yet, but that the the state of Minnesota would pick up the tab.

Low-income individuals could get the IDs for free at any Department of Public Safety office. When asked about people who are physically unable to get to a DPS office to get an ID, Kiffmeyer didn’t have an easy answer. “Those folks are in a very unique special circumstance,” she said adding that there are some details to work out. “We will be meeting with folks,” she said.

Should the measure pass, vouching would become a thing of the past in Minnesota, and same-day registration would require the same photo ID requirements as a registered voter.

The bill also spells out new ballot handling requirements.

Limmer said the bill was intended to fix the alleged problem of ballots discovered in the trunks of cars.

“When we, a few short years ago, were trying to validate the Franken-Coleman election, we find a box of ballots in the trunk of someone’s car,” he said. “That has not been corrected since that time. This would correct that.”

A reporter noted, however, that the incident never happened.

Limmer brushed that fact off and added, “There’s a history of discrepancies in balloting in certain precincts. It seems like it’s a constant that is highlighted by close elections.”

Other provisions in the bill would change Minnesota election law. If passed, the bill would prohibit voting assistance by “the voter’s court-appointed guardian or conservator” or “any paid individual providing health care or health-related personal assistance to the voter.”

That law change has been sought by Minnesota Majority, a group that has been touting an unsubstantiated claim that a health care worker in Crow Wing County voted for people with developmental disabilities and that people who did not have the mental capacity to vote cast ballots in the last election. An investigation found no evidence that those claims were true.

Another subtle change appears to be geared toward Minnesota Majority. The ban on wearing political attire in polling plaes would only be banned “if it is designed to influence voting for or against a particular candidate, political party, or question on the ballot at the election.”

The previous law was more broad and prevented Minnesota Majority’s “Please ID Me” buttons and Tea Party regalia from being worn in the polling place.

Kiffmeyer was the executive director of Minnesota Majority as recently as 2008, and she was Secretary of State prior to DFLer Mark Ritchie.

In a statement on Wednesday, Ritchie criticized the bill.

“This omnibus bill contains a wide range of expansive and expensive election law changes,” he said. “Careful research and analysis of this bill will certainly be necessary to determine the exact cost and impact on local and state governments.”

He said that implementing an electronic voting system in Minnesota could cost as much as $20 million.

“The bill’s implications will also be analyzed by groups who would be affected including absentee and military voters, seniors, and voters with disabilities,” he said. “At a time when lawmakers are looking to streamline government and create efficiencies, HF 210 includes many proposals that would significantly increase the state’s budget deficit and create higher on-going costs for cities, counties and townships.”

The DFL offered its own press conference on Wednesday.

“This proposal is a risk that we cannot afford,” said Rep. Steve Simon of Hopkins. “There’s a very real prospect that tens of thousands of law-abiding Minnesotans will be fenced out of the voting process.”

He said that voter fraud in Minnesota is very low, and in the last election 100 percent of the convictions were for felons voting illegally.

“How will voter ID at the polls impact felons from voting when felons already have ID cards?” he asked.

Rep. Ryan Winkler of Golden Valley agreed. “This bill does nothing to address felon voting.”

“The real reason the Republicans are pushing a photo ID bill is because they think that’s the best and most effective way to block voters from the polls that they think are going to vote for Democrats,” he said. “This is a partisan ploy.”

Minnesota Capitol. Photo: Wikipedia

Three bills that would assist same-sex couples in the event of one partner’s death were passed by the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. Legislators recalled stories of couples who underwent hardships because of inequality in the law, while Tom Prichard of the Minnesota Family Council called the bills “discriminatory” and said they are “unfair to married couples.”

Rep. Frank Hornstein, DFL-Minneapolis, offered a bill that would allow equal access in personal asset distributions. If a couple in a domestic partnership hasn’t drawn up a will, the measure states, assets in the event one partner dies would go to the surviving individual, just as it would with married spouses.

Hornstein said he was inspired to help rectifiy the inequalities of the law after learning of the difficulties faced by a pair in his district.

“There’s a couple in my district, Jim and Duane, and Duane had medical issues he was dealing with and was hospitalized. And his partner could not see him, he didn’t have visitation rights in in the same way that a heterosexual couple would,” he told the committee. “And it really got me thinking about the inequality many of our neighbors and constantly face on a day to day basis.”

Ann Kaner-Roth of Project 515, a group working to educate Minnesotans about the inequalities in Minnesota law, explained the bill, saying, “Essentially the protections would allow the assets of someone who dies without a will in place to be distributed to their domestic partner.”

The bill passed the committee by a voice vote, as did a bill to allow a surviving domestic partner to sue for wrongful death. Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, said the bill is modeled after Minnesota’s Fortune 500 companies.

“The domestic partner definition in this bill, and in all these bills, was taken from some of the most esteemed Minnesota based fortune 500 companies,” he said. “Already our most trusted corporate citizens are way ahead of us on this. I know there are strong opinions on this, but I trust you will vote your conscience.”

A third bill, sponsored by Rep. Paul Thissen, DFL-St. Paul, and passed on Wednesday, addressed Hornstein’s concerns. It would allow domestic partners to share health data in certain situations with the same access that spouses and family members have. It would have allowed Duane’s doctors to alert Jim about Duane’s condition when he was hospitalized.

The main voice of oppposition to the bills was Tom Prichard of the Minnesota Family Council.

“Basically, what they are attempting to do is redefine marriage,” he said. “This is discriminatory… It’s also unfair to married couples because married couples have a legal status and legal obligations where as these individuals are getting the benefits without the responsibilities and fundamentally this is an effort to redefine marriage.”

Despite Prichard’s testimony, all three bills were passed and placed on the General Register. The House could vote on them as soon as next week.

Terri Bonoff Photo: Wikipedia

Terri Bonoff is not running for Congress — yet. But the Democratic state senator, who lost a tough endorsement battle to Ashwin Madia in 2008, is seriously considering a challenge to freshman Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen.

“I’m certainly not being lighthearted about it,” Bonoff tells the Minnesota Independent. “I love public service and I have a lot of work to do, whether it be for this state or at the national level.”

Opinions vary on how vulnerable Paulsen will be in 2010. The 3rd district doesn’t track decisively red or blue. President Obama won it by six percentage points, while Norm Coleman carried it by eight points over Al Franken. Paulsen surprised political observers by handily winning the open seat last year in what was one of the most closely watched (and heavily funded) congressional races in the country. Bonoff, however, still believes it’s winnable.

“It will depend on the environment and the candidate,” she says. “There is no given.”

No other Democratic challenger has emerged to take on Paulsen. Madia has ruled out another run. State Rep. Steve Simon, whose name has also been floated as a possible candidate, is ruling out a run. “Not me,” he says.

Raising sufficient funds to mount a credible challenge to Paulsen will be difficult. With many Democratic incumbents facing tough reelection fights, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other national groups will likely pick their takeover targets sparingly. But Bonoff says she doesn’t feel any pressure to make a decision soon.

“The public doesn’t pay attention until a long time from now,” she says. “People find a way to raise enough money regardless of when they get in. I think that’s a false urgency.”

The freshman Republican legislator won the open Third Congressional District seat by a surprisingly comfortable margin last year in one of the most closely watched contests in the country. Paulsen garnered 48 percent of the vote, while Democratic challenger Ashwin Madia drew support from 41 percent of voters. Independence Party candidate David Dillon was also a factor in the race with 11 percent of the vote.

The Cook Partisan Voting Index currently gives neither party an advantage in the district, where Republicans historically had an edge. Democrats have made serious inroads in state legislature contests, picking up 10 House seats during the last three election cycles. Most recently state Reps. Jerry Newton and Paul Rosenthal took over seats that had been help by the GOP. And President Obama won the suburban district by a 52-46 percent margin last year.

But his coattails proved non-existent. In addition to Paulsen’s comfortable victory, Norm Coleman outpolled Al Franken there by a 47-39 spread in the U.S. Senate contest.

The Third Congressional District is one of just two 2010 House races political analysts view as competitive in the state. The other is the Sixth Congressional District, where Rep. Michele Bachmann’s high-voltage rhetoric makes her an irresistible (if elusive) target for Democrats. She’s already attracted two DFL challengers in Elwyn Tinklenberg and Maureen Reed.

David Wasserman, House Editor for the Cook Political Report, figures Bachmann is slightly more vulnerable than Paulsen. But he believes Paulsen is among the top ten GOP House incumbents nationwide that Democrats could target in 2010. “That’s not to say he’s extremely vulnerable,” Wasserman notes. “It’s just that Democrats don’t have many options.”

Indeed, widespread gains for Democrats in the last two elections mean that the party will be playing defense in a lot of GOP-friendly districts. In addition, the party that controls both the White House and Congress has historically fared poorly in the first mid-term elections. Those factors likely mean that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and other national groups will choose their takeover targets prudently. Whether the Third District attracts significant attention — and money — will probably hinge on how strong a challenger emerges.

So far the race hasn’t drawn any takers. Madia says he doesn’t expect to make another run for the seat. “I felt like I had a good crack at in 2008 and I came up short,” he says. “We should give somebody else a chance.”

The name most often mentioned as a possible contender is state Sen. Terri Bonoff. She was widely viewed as the favorite to earn the DFL endorsement in 2008, but was thwarted by Madia’s upstart candidacy. At present, Bonoff’s not entering the fray.

“I’m not considering it at this time,” she says. “You can only take each day as it comes.”

Other names in the ether: state Rep. Steve Simon and former Edina mayor Jim Hovland. Neither returned a call seeking comment.

Wasserman doesn’t deem the vacant DFL field this early in the election cycle to be a liability necessarily.

“I think most of the candidates who got a very early start in the 2008 cycle fizzled out,” he says. “It’s often the late-breaking candidates who received the necessary buzz.”

Whoever ultimately emerges to challenge Paulsen will undoubtedly face an uphill battle. Bonoff argues that the DFL missed a prime opportunity in 2008.

“The Third District was ripe to elect a Democrat,” she says.

Madia doesn’t disagree. He believes that Paulsen won in part because the Republican did a better job of keeping a fine-tuned message.

“I think that they were very disciplined about their message, which was just taxes, frankly,” he says. “Taxes, taxes, taxes, taxes.”

Democrats in the district insist that they can still win the seat. Marge Hoffa, chair of the Third District DFL, argues that Paulsen is much more socially conservative than his GOP predecessor in the post.

“He’s no Jim Ramstad,” she says. “He’s just not. He’s much more conservative.”

But she acknowledges that the odds of taking over the seat will decrease with each election cycle.

“If we come up with somebody that’s really an outstanding candidate the money will pour in,” she says, “because this is our shot to take Paulsen out.”

Last summer some friends of mine came up with a brilliant idea for my bachelor party. On a drizzly August afternoon, we boarded a bizarre, rectangular bicycle-built-for-16 called the Pedal Pub and set out for a long day of barhopping around northeast Minneapolis. The details after that are less clear in my memory, but I do recall one of the rules of the Pedal Pub was, by law, no booze on the bike.

Rep. Steve Simon, DFL-St. Louis Park, is apparently as outraged by the rule as we were that afternoon. He’s introduced a bill that would amend Minnesota’s open-bottle law to allow alcohol consumption on “commercial multi-passenger bicycles.”

Continued: Click “Read more”Credit goes to MPR’s Fantasy Legislature blog for catching this bill, known as HF3849. The environmental blog TreeHugger has since picked up on the odd news item, too.

The Pedal Pub, by the way, provides a designated driver who controls the contraption’s steering and brakes. You and your sweaty, buzzed friends simply provide the force for motion, pedaling furiously on one of five stations on either side of the pub. The vehicle has a top speed of about 5 mph.

MPR reports that the Pedal Pub bill cleared the Commerce and Labor Committee with no problems and has since been rolled into something called an alcohol omnibus bill.

Read moreWith all the brouhaha over the 3rd District, what about that Senate race? WCCO’s Pat Kessler fact-checks the latest anti-war ad targeting Norm Coleman for his votes on the war, and finds them somewhat lacking. However, as soon as that was done, Coleman gave his DFL opponents more ammunition — Wednesday, a cloture vote on restoring the writ of habeas corpus failed, with Coleman voting no. Keep in mind, kids, that habeas corpus is a constitutionally guaranteed right, and last year’s Military Commissions Act ran roughshod over it. 

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid voted no for procedural reasons, so the bill actually got 57 votes, meaning Coleman was one of just three votes needed to restore an important piece of the Constitution that Democrats and left-leaning activist groups say has been mangled by the Bush administration.

*Correction:  Although geographically the shortest route to CD3 for Simon is straight into Minnetonka, a single precinct in House District 44A, Hopkins 7, is indeed in CD3.  This means that Simon would NOT have to move outside his House district in order to run for Congress.

Thanks for the catch!