Tim Pawlenty's Politics of Hate [View All]

[Minnesota Raindog]

This is an excellent summary of Tim Pawlenty's campaign against the human rights of BLGT people. It's an ugly story, and one that deserves to be told wherever Timmy the Tool campaigns for president.

http://mnprogressiveproject.com/diary/6271/#12000

By State Senator Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis)

In his bid for the presidency it will be interesting to see if my Governor, Tim Pawlenty, will try to perpetuate the air of a hip, young-ish, Bruce Springsteen fan, and infer that he is in step with the growing acceptance of LGBT people and families. To do so would be profoundly misleading, having achieved political success by emphasizing his hostility to LGBT people and many others.

His latest salvo is the veto of a common sense measure that would have allowed us explicit legal rights to carry out our partners' final wishes, make funeral arrangements and to be able to recover from those liable for our partners' wrongful death.

These are perhaps the most sensitive decisions someone will ever make regarding the one they love. But LGBT Minnesotans, our friends

When first elected to the Minnesota House in 1992, he was your run of the mill, suburban moderate Republican, corporate law firm, up-and-comer. In his first year he voted for a successful amendment to Minnesota's Human Rights Act to bar discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens. In his first interview after becoming a candidate for Governor, he found it important to announce that his only regret as a legislator was having cast that very vote. Clearly gubernatorial candidate Pawlenty knew that any ambitious Republican politician had to up his anti-gay quotient. He refreshed that tactic, calling these protections "overbaked" in a recent Newsweek interview profiling his presidential ambition. On the Sunday morning talkies, he has asserted of late that Don't Ask Don't Tell is not "broken" and doesn't need "fixing".
Since deciding he was statewide, now national political material, Tim Pawlenty has never missed an opportunity to pile on. As majority leader and Governor-aspirant he was at the forefront of eliminating health care for the domestic partners of state employees extended by then Governor Jesse Ventura. In a speech to the Minnesota Republican endorsing convention, he couldn't refrain from characterizing his Democratic rivals as "gay-marriage-loving" in a litany of sins of which they were guilty.

Pawlenty has yet to support even the most modest, most humane changes to policies that affect our lives, twice vetoing bills to allow municipalities to extend health care to domestic partners of employees. He forced a change to a bill in order to exclude us from the ability to use our own sick time to care for our ill partner, or even take time off to bury them. He vetoed a bill in 2009 (after having explicitly agreed to sign it) that would have provided protection from bullying against LGBT kids in our schools, despite the shocking suicides of two very young bullying victims just weeks prior.

The Minnesota legislature successfully beat back efforts by then State Senator Michele Bachmann to place an anti-marriage constitutional amendment on the ballot, no thanks to Governor Pawlenty who signed a pledge to support the effort and appeared in television ads promoting its passage.

He has had no success in electing state legislators on his platform of anti-gay, anti-marriage rhetoric. Despite throwing everything they've had at defeating anyone who has voiced notions of fairness, the forces of the far right have only managed to lose a number of their most extreme legislators. Those who support our community are now a strong majority.

I suspect young voters won't be so hip to Pawlenty's vibe in 2012. And it will be pretty clear that he doesn't actually listen to the Boss' lyrics.
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The third openly gay legislator elected to the Minnesota legislature, former community organizer and city council policy aide, Scott Dibble, Democrat, was first elected to the House in 2000 then to the Senate in 2002, to represent a district in Minneapolis. He serves as chair of the Transit Subcommittee, and in addition to civil and human rights, has provided legislative leadership on in the areas of taxes, energy, environment, housing, transportation, public health, jobs, arts and culture.