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MINNEAPOLIS – Tom Prichard, president of the Minnesota Family Council (MFC), today delivered the names of thousands of Minnesota petition signers who support the Defense of Marriage Amendment (DOMA) to DFL Senate Leader Dean Johnson’s office. Over 20,000 individuals have signed petitions in support of protecting marriage. He also challenged Senator Johnson’s accusations that groups supporting DOMA are simply promoting “hatred and misinformation” and providing misleading information on the need for DOMA.
“We’re disappointed that Senator Johnson would accuse supporters of DOMA of promoting ‘hatred and misinformation.’ His attacks are not only groundless but disparage the motives and intentions of people who are sincerely concerned with efforts by state judges to rewrite the marriage laws across the country thus overriding the will of the people,” said Prichard. “One of the claims Senator Johnson and his colleagues repeatedly make is there is no need for DOMA, because we have a state law and a 1970s Minnesota Supreme Court case that both recognize marriage as between one man and one woman. What Senator Johnson repeatedly fails to acknowledge is that our state marriage law can easily be overturned by activist judges and our current supreme court justices can simply reverse a previous court decision. All one has to do is look at the experience of Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont and Massachusetts to see state courts cavalierly overturn existing state marriage laws,” added Prichard. Senator Johnson’s most recent dismissal of the concerns of constituents was at a Capitol meeting with forty constituents who took a bus to St. Paul to meet with the Senator. During the current legislative session, Senator Johnson refused a request to attend a townhall meeting on this issue in his district. “The only way to truly protect marriage from attacks by activist state judges and backroom political deals is DOMA which explicitly states in the Constitution that marriage is between one man and one woman,” concluded Prichard. |
The Minnesota Family Council is Minnesota's largest nonprofit, non-partisan pro-family organization.
Minnesota Family Council / Minnesota Family Institute
2855 Anthony Lane South, Minneapolis MN, 55418-3265
phone 612.789.8811, fax 612.789.8858, www.mfc.org