While the announcement of the Minnesota for Marriage RV road trip garnered a lot of attention in the Twin Cities media, the road trip itself was greeted by residents nearly as warmly as the American Anthropological Association welcomed tour star speaker Glenn Stantion.
And that was only Saturday. A triumphant return of Old Man Winter forced the cancellation of Sunday's stops in Detriot Lakes and Morris.
KARE 11 covered the first stop in a restaurant parking lot off I-35; the local news paper, the Hinckley News, doesn't have a website. KARE-11 reports in Anti-gay marriage rally held in Hinckley:
A sparse crowd turned out in the Tobie's restaurant parking lot to hear speakers call on state legislators to vote "no" on gay marriage in Minnesota. It was the first of 10 planned rallies by the Minnesota for Marriage group."A man and a woman join together for the procreation of children. Anything other than that is clearly not what God intended," said Pastor Steve Anderson, Saint Stephan's Lutheran Church of Braham.
Only about 3 dozen attended the 7 p.m. gathering in cold temperatures with some snow falling. The Great Adventure band of Braham offered hymns and patriotic songs before featured speaker Glenn Stanton of the Colorado-based Focus on the Family group.
"We are told by the opposition and oh, your pastor is not going to have to marry same sex couples. You know what, we'll try to take your word on that, but don't blame us if we don't completely believe you," said Stanton. "The support that is out there supposedly growing for same sex marriage is razor thin, because it is built on soundbites." . . .
The video is current unavailable, but after our earlier viewing, Bluestem concludes that three dozen is a generous estimate.
Saturday, the RV hit Duluth, Grand Rapids and Grand Rapids. There's no coverage so far of the events in the online editions of the Grand Rapids or the Bemidji Dispatch (which did cover a visit to town by DFL House members in House DFLers talk job, bonding packages).
Duluth's a bigger media market, but the coverage there isn't much better for M4M's rearview mirror tour. The Duluth News Tribune reports in Gay-marriage opponents stage rally in Duluth:
Elness, who lives near the University of Minnesota Duluth, was among about 70 people who attended a 45-minute rally staged by Minnesota for Marriage in the parking lot of Mount of Olives Baptist Church on Swan Lake Road.
The organization, which is determined to defeat same-sex marriage bills being considered by the Minnesota Legislature, was in the early stages of a road trip that began in Hinckley on Friday. Events scheduled for Detroit Lakes and Morris on Sunday were canceled because of weather.
The colorful school bus-sized RV emblazoned with the words “Minnesota for Marriage” and “One Man, One Woman, Our State,” also stopped at Grand Rapids and Brainerd on Saturday.
Their purpose was to mobilize supporters to urge their legislators to defeat the bills. Crystal Crocker, the group’s director of grassroots development, encouraged the Duluth audience to ask Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk, DFL-Cook, not to bring the legislation to the floor.
But the primary target was state Rep. Mary Murphy, DFL-Hermantown, who Crocker said is undecided on the issue. The group had fliers prepared to hand out with Murphy’s contact information. . . .
On broadcast media, the local NBC affiliate reported on the rally in Minnesota for Marriage Holds Rally in Duluth.
Glenn Stanton: dubious anthropology
So who is the big out-of-state "expert" M4M is trotting around? The Duluth News Tribune reports that he said:
Glenn Stanton, of Colorado-based Focus on the Family, offered ideas of how the argument should be framed.
“Don’t let the legislators tell you that this is just a religious issue,” Stanton said.
Instead, he said, marriage between a man and a woman has existed globally, in all traditions and cultures, throughout history. It’s not an idea right-wing Christians are foisting on others, he said.
“How did the religious conservatives go everywhere at every time and enforce that very narrow view of marriage on all those cultures at all those times?” he asked, and then drew chuckles when he added: “As I like to say in my debates on university campuses, there is a vast, right-wing conspiracy, but it’s not that vast.”
As far back as 2008, back when Stanton was claiming that a consensus of anthropologists agreed with him, the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association begged to differ:
The results of more than a century of anthropological research on households, kinship relationships, and families, across cultures and through time, provide no support whatsoever for the view that either civilization or viable social orders depend upon marriage as an exclusively heterosexual institution. Rather, anthropological research supports the conclusion that a vast array of family types, including families built upon same-sex partnerships, can contribute to stable and humane societies.
GLAAD has created an index of Glenn Stanton-isms. A few choice examples:
-- “All sexual sin is wrong because it fails to mirror the Trinitarian image, but homosexuality does more than fail. It’s a particularly evil lie of Satan because he knows that it overthrows the very image of the Trinitarian God in creation, revealed in the union of male and female.” Adds: "nothing else challenges this image of the Triune God so profoundly and thoroughly as homosexuality. It's not what we were made for."
-- Says same-sex marriage "not only redefines marriage wholesale for everyone, but it actually deconstructs humanity itself."
Well then. Bluestem has never felt deconstructed by our gay married friends, although we do confess their wit can be a bit biting.
Photo: Glenn Stanton, Duluth News Tribune.
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