Transcripts

DULCIE LAWRENCE: Opponents argued that the so-called gay rights bill is not a matter of civil rights for a minority group, but a moral question with profound implications for society. Minnesota Catholic Conference spokesman John Market repeated his earlier testimony that gay rights are not absolute and others have the right to exercise discretion in whether or not they want to discriminate. Mrs. Dan Reed for Women for Responsible Legislation said the bill would go against Minnesota's historic struggle for civil rights.

DAN REED: This, it does in the following way. Our constitutional tradition has recognized the dignity of a person's race, his color, his creed, and national origin or ancestry, and indeed the personhood and human quality of the individual having physical handicaps. Long struggles have been needed to vindicate racial and religious rights. But the moral tradition of the nation always inherently recognized these rights.

This bill, however, lumps together those long fought for and highly protected areas of human rights with a form of sexual expression. Homosexuality. Homosexuality practices such as sodomy are thoroughly condemned in the tradition of American law and the statutes of all states today, including Minnesota. It would seem sheer folly and an act of administrative irresponsibility, psychologically, as well as legally detrimental to place the desires of a relatively few people in our society to express themselves in a certain way sexually on a plane of equal importance with the great basic plane of the Civil Rights Movement in terms of protecting rights of race, religion, and national origin.

DULCIE LAWRENCE: Mrs. Dan Reed of Women for Responsible Legislation. The opponent's arguments were in vain. The bill was passed 7 - 5 and sent to the floor of the Senate. It would prohibit discrimination in the areas of housing, education, employment, and public accommodations and public services, with the exception of marriage and adoption services. I'm Dulcie Lawrence at the Capitol.