(warning: player contains an ad. It's how we pay for the video tapes and gas to shoot these things.)
Senator John Marty is an advocate for same sex marriage in Minnesota. The "National Organization For Marriage" is spending $200,000 on an attack ad accusing him of "Imposing Gay Marriage on Minnesotans".
Senator Marty thinks its government's role to stay out of telling "who should and should not marry".
Transcript after the jump.
Craig Stellmacher: Senator Marty, I watched this commercial at home last night on You Tube also. And they say you're trying to impose gay marriage on Minnesota. What do you want to say to that?
Senator John Marty: I say that's pretty sad interpretation on their part. My marriage is something they say they would really respect. My wife and I have been married for almost 30 years now. Our son's graduating from college. Our daughter is in divinity school. Wonderful kids, wonderful family. The kind of thing they say they respect.
But they're not about respecting families and marriage. They're out preventing other marriages. They're the ones who want to impose their will on others. They want to say 'you can not marry the person you love'. We're not trying to do that. I don't want to 'impose gay marriage' on anybody. I want people to choose their own partners in life.
Frankly, they can't win at what they're trying to do. Not only are they on the wrong side of history in terms of legalizing gay marriage, but they can't stop loving couples from falling in love. If two women fall in love with each other, they can't stop that. They can't stop them from making a lifelong commitment to each other. They can't stop them from raising children. They can't stop them from living their lives. They only thing they can do is prevent them from getting the legal recognition that everyone else gets and discriminate against them. And that's wrong. And that's why its outrageous with what they're trying to do with their massive advertising buy. They're trying to raise fear.
Craig Stellmacher: What is the role of government then with marriage and with the church?
Senator John Marty: The role of government in marriage should be just to treat everybody fairly and equally. If people want to have a religious commitment in front of a... in their church in their faith tradition... that's wonderful. That's a religious belief. And I don't want to force those folks churches to have to perform same sex marriages. Nobody would. I just don't want them to have government block other churches from being able to perform the marriages they want to have.
What government should do is treat everybody equally. Treat all faiths equally. And just as when the US Supreme Court said that you can not have laws banning interracial marriage, which some of these same churches 40 years ago were saying was immoral because they couldn't have race mixing.
But the same arguments they used 40 years ago against interracial marriages they're using now against same sex marriages. And the bottom line is nobody ever forced them to perform any interracial marriage. Many of them would now 40 years later. 40 years from now many of them will probably perform same sex marriages. But it's not government's role to prohibit... that's the worst thing government can do. The most intrusive thing government can do is tell churches who they can and cannot marry.