The president of the Minnesota Family Council said “redefining marriage” would only usher in a greater expansion of government.
Known as the Berean League, the group fought repeals of sodomy laws and published literature that depicted
The groups behind a ballot measure that would put a ban on same-sex marriage in the Minnesota Constitution urged the state campaign finance board on Tuesday to retain a rule that would allow corporations to make unlimited contributions in support of the ballot measure. The Minnesota Family Council testified that it shouldn’t have to disclose any of its donors in the campaign to pass the amendment, while Minnesota for Marriage brought in attorneys from the Citizens United Supreme Court case to argue that political spending by corporations on the amendment push should be shielded from disclosure laws.
The Minnesota Family Council, the prime mover behind an anti–gay marriage amendment to be listed on the 2012 ballot, has a history of involvement with Bradlee Dean, the controversial head of You Can Run But You Cannot Hide ministries. Both groups have claimed credit for getting the amendment passed through the Minnesota Legislature.
Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council, defended his organization’s “legislative manual” in an interview with National Public Radio on Wednesday. The manual asserted that gays and lesbians are more likely to practice sex with animals and children and that they enjoy eating human excrement. After the documents were brought to light on Tuesday they disappeared from the Family Council website.
The Minnesota Family Council, the lead proponent of a ballot initiative that would add a ban on same-sex marriage to the Minnesota Constitution, removed information from its website on Tuesday that said gays and lesbians engage in pedophilia and bestiality. The Family Council’s president Tom Prichard recently said that he hoped for a “respectful debate.” Opponents of the anti-gay marriage amendment seized on Prichard’s statements and the information on the website on Tuesday called on the Family Council to remove it.
Tom Prichard, president of the the Minnesota Family Council, the main proponent of state Republicans’ anti–gay marriage amendment, told reporters after the bill’s passage on Saturday night that the goal was not to get “personal” and that he hoped that Minnesotans could have a “respectful discussion.” But documents on the group’s website uncovered by bloggers on Monday are dashing those hopes. A legislative handbook put out by the Family Council states that gays and lesbians engage in bestiality and ingest human excrement and claims that a disproportionate number of “homosexuals” are pedophiles.
The decision to allow anti-gay preacher Bradlee Dean to give the opening prayer before the Minnesota House on Friday sent shockwaves through the Legislature, and the reverberations from that decision continued over the weekend. Democrats filed a complaint on Sunday after House Speaker Kurt Zellers moved to strike Dean’s name from the official record, while Dean, after skipping his own press conference on the matter, took to the airwaves to slam Zellers for not defending him.
While state Republicans are spearheading the contentious move to put a constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriage on the ballot next year, not all conservatives are behind them. In recent weeks, a number of conservatives — ranging from small-government and libertarian groups to gay Republicans — have spoken out against codification of marriage laws within the Minnesota Constitution. Some say the amendment is contrary to liberty, while others have taken on social conservative groups such as the Minnesota Family Council.
When the National Organization for Marriage and the Minnesota Family Council spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads promoting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions last fall, the groups should have reported those expenditures, according to a complaint filed with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board earlier this month. The complaint, which focuses on ads launched throughout the 2010 campaign cycle in support of gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, asks for financial penalties as well as an audit of NOM’s spending in Minnesota.
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