Last weekend, I took a road trip through Southern Minnesota. It's a really, true, live place, and I remember that some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful. There's no place like home.
I live now in Senate District 18, where You Can Run But You Can't Hide pastor Bradlee Dean has put his micro-mansion house in Annandale up for sale, so I can't say for sure that he still lives here. Some of rural Minnesota isn't very nice, though we have no exclusive franchise on divisive and ugly politics. There's no place like home.
Wherever Dean hangs his hat nowadays-- in Annandale or Minneapolis--he also heads the Old Path Church, whatever that is. It certainly isn't the the old high road I took on Saturday, or the yellow brick road to equality on which I march with my friends of Dorothy.
But one shouldn't credit Dean with the campy wickedness of the villain who fought Dorothy, however much of a meltdown his love affair with the Minnesota GOP is having today after he delivered an offensive opening prayer today in the Minnesota House. He's quite earnest in his persecutions of The Other in his life.
The fury over his prayer has exposed the politics driving the amendment, dissolving the mealy-mouthed Republican claims that putting the amendment on the ballot isn't about discrimination and treating some people as second class citizens, but about letting people vote. Doug Grow at Minnpost noted in Suddenly, GOP legislators seem to be losing the 'message battle' that:
But in the last two weeks, leaders either lost control of their own caucuses, or failed to understand how late-session pushing of the party's social agenda would overwhelm their budget message.
Dean is certainly overwhelmed. Over on his blog, Dean is dissolving in an earnest puddle of self-pitying victimhood, tears running like the waters of Babylon. I'll take the Minnesota River and its muddy waters any day. There's no place like home.
And it's not just Dean's long history of anti-gay bigotry (pertinent because this was the day on which the marriage inequality amendment might have moved to the chamber's floor) but the content of the prayer itself.
Dean's extreme anti-gay bigotry has long been chronicled at places like the Minnesota Independent, Dump Bachmann, Ripple in Stillwater and to a lesser degree, Bluestem Prairie, though largely neglected by the rocking chair media before this incident. Perhaps, like reassured munchkins, they'll come out from hiding when reporting on this.
Two other areas of concern: the single focus on Christianity and the statement that implies the President Barack Obama is not a Christian who acknowledges Jesus. Here's the close that set Minnesota atwitter:
In his prayer, Dean said, “I know this is a non-denominational prayer in this Chamber and it’s not about the Baptists and it’s not about the Catholics alone or the Lutherans or the Wesleyans. Or the Presbyterians the evangelicals or any other denomination but rather the head of the denomination and his name is Jesus. As every President up until 2008 has acknowledged. And we pray it. In Jesus’ name.”
To put the first issue in perspective, all-inclusive prayers made news and spurred discussion earlier in the session, when Senator Terri Bonoff objected to a prayer that only addressed Christian believers (Bonoff is a practicing Jew). A reasoned discussion of the case can be found at Minnesota Conservatives.
Dean's role in that dust-up? JTA reported in Radio host threatens to oust Minn. lawmaker over invocation objections that Dean called for her to be removed from office, so it's not as if he wasn't aware of the incident before he took to the podium today.
Indeed, one wonders about the head full of straw possessed the freshman Republican Representative who invited Dean and took us down this road today. I'm no Wizard, but I can say with confidence that people who have no more brains than that man are known to teach at local junior colleges. What they do have that Leidiger apparently doesn't is Google. Ernie Leidiger should learn to use it.
The second flying monkey in Dean's prayer is the Obama slam, the opium of the anti-Obama postmoronic socially conservative right: that Obama hates Jesus, that he can't say the name of Jesus. Perhaps the blizzard of attention this incident drew will wake them to the silliness of it all, and they'll be able to get on the road to sanity--or at least a makeover of their madness.
But there's no place like home, and I'l leave you with what should be the lasting statement about the prayer, given by Terry Morrow just after the rabid Dean finshed up. Morrow asked his colleagues to assure that such an incident would never happen again.
Morrow represents the rural district where you can find the beautiful road I traveled last Saturday, the town where I graduated from high school.
But I'd also like to think that Morrow represents the best and the most beautiful part of this state, the true part which isn't a landscape or house district, but the hearts of citizens who can learn to respect and appreciate their neighbors, whatever their religion, beliefs or identity.
Here's the speech, from a Greater Minnesota legislator. There's no place like home, and this speaks to the Minnesota I carry in my heart:
Photo: Representative Terry Morrow. Photo by John Kaul, from Morrow's Facebook page.
well said! bless you. susan jost
Posted by: susan jost | May 21, 2011 at 06:04 AM
There shouldn't be a prayer period. Separation of Church and State. If they want to have a prayer they should do it outside the legislature, outside the chamber, and then when they enter the chamber, do their business. The prayer automatically excludes everyone who does not hold supernatural beliefs in some higher power. The prayer automatically elevates the supernatural over the rational, and promotes the idea of religion over non-religion. Removal of the opening prayer would be the best solution.
Posted by: Larry | May 21, 2011 at 09:11 AM
Cheap swipe at community college educators.
Bluestem says: Not really: i was one myself.
Posted by: Me | May 21, 2011 at 09:58 AM