TRUE Liberty, justice, equality --- and prosperity --- have prevailed!

 

The MN Lege has passed our same sex marriage freedom legislation. We now have more liberty in Minnesota, more equality, and more justice. We have acted to preserve families, to protect and nurture children, and we have done so by defining the separation of church and state with the wording 'civil marriage' to assure the fearful that their more narrow concept of religious marriage is protected, while at the same time also protecting the different concepts of marriage held by other religious groups and by those who do not share religious belief.

Thank you Minnesota Lege. Thank you Governor Dayton for scheduling the signing tomorrow. Thank you to everyone who worked and donated, and who pushed back against ignorance and bigotry, and the conservative coercion and conformity to it.

Minnesota is on the right side of history on this issue. Other states are going to follow very soon; Illinois is poised to do the same thing, most likely this month or shortly thereafter.  Not only other states, other jurisdictions in the US such as Native American tribes, have made this change, but other nations are doing so now as well.  I am only sorry that we did not do more to take the lead on that arc of history, locally, nationally, and internationally by a better example before now.  But better now than later, better late than never.

The sweet truth is that without the miscalculation of the MN GOP to try to use this as a wedge issue, along with their voter fraud fear mongering, is what pushed this issue to this resolution.  I am so proud of our state today, I am proud that it was done with care and thoughtfulness.

This does not affect me personally; but it affects people I know, it affects far more people that I don't know personally, for the better.  I'm a bit caught by surprise at how much emotion I feel about this, both the amount of joy, and the amount of pride for this progress.  This is good, this is powerful, this is joyous; this is right, this is decent, this makes us better and stronger.