Florida Agenda

ST PAUL, MINNESOTA – Jesse Ventura, the former professional wrestler, actor, and Governor of Minnesota, has added his voice to the campaign against a proposed state constitutional amendment that would define marriage in the North Star State as the union between one man and one woman.

“The constitution should not be used to oppress people,” Ventura said. “The constitution is used to protect people. Love is by far bigger than government can ever be,” he added. In a video posted last week on YouTube by Minnesotans United for All Families, Ventura and Terry, his wife of 37 years, declared their support for marriage equality, and urged Minnesotans to vote “no” in the November referendum, which poses the question, “Shall the Minnesota Constitution be amended to provide that only a union of one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as marriage in Minnesota?”

“Government should not be telling people who to fall in love with,” said Ventura, who served as governor from 1999 to 2003. “We’re supposed to be the home of the brave, land of the free.”

Noting the non-partisan nature of marriage equality, Ventura, 61, said, “This is not a Democrat issue, this is not a Republican issue,” and added, “It affects each and every one of us regardless of whatever our political persuasion is.”

A recent survey by Public Policy Polling shows the referendum to be a statistical dead heat, with 48 percent of Minnesota voters supporting the same-sex marriage ban, and 47 percent opposing it.

ST.PAUL, MN  – The Grace Community United Church of St. Paul says a “miracle” donation of $15,000 is keeping its doors open, after more than 70 percent of the congregation left the parish following its pastor’s endorsement of same-sex marriage.

The donation was a gift from the United Church of Christ in Dallas, a congregation consisting mostly of gay and lesbian members, in support of Grace Community’s pastor, Rev. Oliver White, who voted in 2005 to support the United Church of Christ’s endorsement of marriage equality. The minister says that his progressive interpretation of human rights has cost him and
his pulpit.

“Some young people maybe age 12 or so were walking by,” White recently told local station WCCO-TV. “I said why don’t you all come to Sunday school this Sunday, and their response was, ‘We heard you are a gay church and we can’t come here,’” White recalled.

The mostly African-American congregation is affiliated with the Congregationalist church movement, in which each congregation independently and autonomously runs its own affairs.
“We are not a gay church, we are church with a door that’s open to everybody,” White explained.

That sentiment cost White 150 members of his church, who said they could not support his belief that human rights and civil rights includes gay rights. “They take the bible very, very literally,” White noted of his former members.

ST. PAUL, MN – Mark Dayton, governor of Minnesota issued an executive order establishing a task force to study bullying in Minnesota’s public schools.

The task force will study reports of bullying and come up with the best practices and examine current laws concerning bullying and make their findings and recommendations to the governor.