Spirit in Action
Marriage Equality in Minnesota - Listening for Victory!
Minnesotans United for All Families is trying something new in their struggle for marriage equality - listening & telling personal stories - and it's working like nothing before has ever worked. Liz Oppenheimer & Jeanne Burns share their experience with "conversations" and Grant Stevensen, director of the Faith Dept. of Minnesotans United for All Families talks about the united effort of many walks of faith in opposing the proposed marriage amendment to the MN constitution
- Broadcast on:
- 09 Sep 2012
- Audio Format:
- other
[music] ♪ Let us sing this song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ That we may hear as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpsmeat. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life. ♪ Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ That we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice of every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ Today for Spirit in Action, we'll be visiting with three dedicated workers for marriage equality in Minnesota. On November 6, 2012, the ballot in that state will include a proposed amendment to the state constitution as to whether a marriage will be defined as one man, one woman. With lots of hard work and a bit of grace, Minnesota will be the first state to defeat such an attempt to keep the blessings and material support of state-sanctioned marriage from LGBT persons. The effort to defeat the proposed amendment is embodied in a group called Minnesotans United for All Families, and you can find them at mnunited.org, or get that link and more at northernspiritradio.org. Later on, we'll be joined by Grant Stevenson, Director of Minnesotans United's Faith Department, but first we'll be visiting with two volunteers for this heartful and soulful movement. Liz Oppenheimer and Jean Burns. Liz is part of a religious coalition, Interfaith Roundtable, and of Outfront Minnesota, and she is the editor of a book writing cheerfully on the web. Jean is a writer and activist with special concerns and action about social class and race. Liz Oppenheimer and Jean Burns join us from the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Jean and Liz, it's wonderful to have you here today for Spirit in Action. Hi, Mark. It's great to be here. Thanks so much, Mark, for having us. Jean, you're a writer and an activist amongst other things. When did you get involved with activism? Oh, my gosh. I think I've been an activist in many different ways for a very long time. Since I was a young adult, probably, I was 24 when I started working at the organization that's now called Outfront Minnesota, which is an organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in Minnesota. And I started that job in 1992, and I was there for two and a half years. So, evidently, you came out or were clearly self-identified as lesbian or as not mainstream or something before that. When did that happen for you? I came out in my late teens the first time and then had to come out again a couple of years later after I went screaming back into the closet. My first coming out really was just, it felt like, experimentation, and it was experimentation with the wrong person and it scared me. And I just got very scared and started to try to repress who I was by drinking. And then literally got drunk one night at a party and literally woke up in a closet and realized what I was doing and decided to come out. Oh, my goodness. Yes. That's beautiful. Liz, let's talk a little bit about you. You've been married to Jean since 2000 under the care of Twin Cities Friends meeting. When did you self-identify as lesbian if that's how you identify? Thanks for giving me the opportunity to clarify. I actually identify as bisexual. I didn't come out to myself. I didn't realize that I could be attracted either to men or to women until I was in my mid-30s. I assume that both of you at one time or another had to deal with some consequences of being shoehorned where you didn't fit. Well, this is Liz and that's certainly true for me. Lots of our friends and even family still sometimes refer to me as a lesbian. You know, or refer to our relationship, my relationship with Jean as a lesbian relationship. When it's a family member, they're pretty quick to catch themselves in that. But a number of our friends still really have not. Either they haven't been up front with asking each of us how, just how do we identify just as you put it when you ask? And so sometimes we let that, or I let that go. And sometimes I choose to interrupt and say actually I identify as bisexual. And it really takes the conversation into a different realm. Mostly something that enlarges the conversation and heightens people's awareness a bit. I certainly have had that experience obviously as lots of people assuming that I'm straight, but also around gender identity. I feel most comfortable when I'm around people who are less situated and identifying with either binary, so either fully masculine or fully feminine. And that's in part because while I feel like a woman, I don't feel like a woman as defined in the narrow space of woman by the binary. I present in a lot of ways, in more male ways, I'm much more aggressive. I'm much more apt to engage in conflict. But when men do that, they're praised and when women do that, they're demeaned. In that way, I feel like you have to be a certain way to be able to be identified as women. During winter, especially, I get shoot out of women's restrooms all the time. Really? Yes. For what reason? Well, in winter, I'm wearing bulky or clothes. I don't have hips. I don't wear makeup. I have very short hair. I walk like a man. I'm also tall. I'm five foot nine. I'm big. I'm broad. My mother told me all the time, growing up, stop walking like a boy. Oh, really? Yeah. And I just do. It could be because I don't have hips. I just don't walk like a woman. Well, this is particularly important at this time in Minnesota where both of you live in the Twin Cities area. There's a constitutional amendment that's going to be voted on shortly that is going to attempt to put in the Constitution the definition of marriage as just one man and one woman. And that, therefore, your marriage, which is already not legally recognized by the state, is constitutionally not recognized by the state. You're both working against this in one way or another? Yes. Yes, very much so. And what are your main modes of addressing this issue and why? Why is this important at this point? One of the ways that I've been involved is promoting the strategy of having conversations with friends and family who we know and asking them to vote no on the marriage amendment. The wording is very straightforward and it initially appears harmless that if the Constitution should be amended to provide that only a union between one man and one woman would be valid or recognized as a marriage in Minnesota. And part of having conversations is that it allows us to go more deeply into what does marriage mean. Think about the people in same-sex relationships, who you know, do you think one day they might want to be able to get married? And, you know, what does marriage mean to you? And do you think that people who happen to have fallen in love with another gender would like one day to be able to do that for themselves? And so I'm training people, as a volunteer, I'm either asked to go to a place and provide training on why the conversational strategy is so important, as well as giving people the direct experience of practicing saying things out loud and to each other, preparing folks for having conversations with the people that they know. Mostly I'm following the formula of having conversations, talking to people that I know or people that I just meet, talking to them in the way that Minnesotans United has asked us to talk about because it's what has been working. That has been eye-opening for me because I see it working. I see the strategy working. You mean you actually see people who start with one opinion and appear to move in a different direction? Yes. So this spring I was in the hospital and there was a medical person in my room trying to find a vein in my arm and we got to talking about the marriage amendment. So I asked him, "Do you know about the amendment and do you know how you're going to vote?" And he says, "Yes, I support God's view of marriage. I think that marriage should only be between one man and woman and that's how God defined it." And in this he kept saying, "But I see you as children of God and I don't hate you or anything like that." And he also affirmed our relationship. And I nodded and listened and asked him some more questions. I asked him if he knew any gay or lesbian people. Oh yes, he knew some gay and lesbian people. He went to school with them in Texas and he was certain that they would support him in saying yes to this marriage amendment. And then he went on to talk about how he thinks it's not right that opposite sex couples who live together also don't have rights. I affirmed him in that as well and I said, "Yes, that is absolutely not fair." And that doesn't seem right. That couples who choose not to marry should be discriminated against as well. Finally, after listening a lot and affirming a lot, he started asking me questions. So I told him a story. Last year Liz and I with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece went to Alaska. We boarded the cruise ship in Vancouver, Canada. Because of that we had to go through customs to get on to the ship. So my brother, sister-in-law, and niece went through together. But Liz and I had to go through separately because we are not considered family according to the US government. We're standing there in line and they're going through together and we're going through separately and I see my niece who was at the time ten. This girl has only ever known us as family, has only ever known the two of us as her aunties. She's only ever known us as married, is wearing these wedding rings. So I'm telling this story and as I start to tell this story, I start to have tears in my eyes. They just started coming and I said, "I saw her look at us and I had no idea what to say to her about why we couldn't go through together." And she couldn't even form a question. She just looked really confused. I told him this story. I think after then I said, "You know, you might want to call your gay and lesbian friends in Texas and ask them what they think." And he said he would. So the next day I'm discharged and I'm showered and packing up my stuff and getting ready just waiting for Liz to come and get me. And he comes and finds me and he says, "I came earlier but you were asleep and I came here to tell you I couldn't sleep last night." And he said, "I really had no idea that heterosexual people could not see the things that you go through. I just have to rethink things." Now mind you, he didn't say he was going to vote no, but he did say that he would call his friends. And maybe I didn't get him to the no, but maybe my story impacted him in a way that arguing with him would never have. So I could have argued with him about the Bible. I could have argued with him about civil unions not being the same thing. I could have argued those points but I didn't. I listened and I affirmed. And then I told him my story that talked about rights. I just told this emotional story. That's what gets at people, that heart connection. Not the head stuff, not the intellectual stuff, not the arguing about the facts. Yeah. And Liz, you're part of the training on this too, right? You've been trained as an official process that people go through to learn how to do this conversation. Did you do this also, Jean? Well, there are trainings set up primarily through Minnesotans United for all families, but even before there were trainings, it was known by research coming out of California after the Prop 8 decision, as well as Maine's Question 1. There was research done where people went out after the votes were counted and, you know, all of that. What these researchers who went door knocking found was that when they found out that someone was straight and had voted yes on these questions that also, you know, respectively, in those two states restricted marriage and defined marriage is only between a man and a woman. The person doing the canvassing would ask, do you know any gay or lesbian people or people in same-sex relationships? And the straight people, most of them said yes, they did. Sometimes it was a family member. Sometimes it was a good friend. And three quarters of Americans do know someone who's gay or lesbian or in a same-sex relationship or otherwise not straight. And when they asked, well, did your gay friend or your lesbian daughter, the person you know, did they talk to you about this amendment before you voted on it? A lot of the people would say, no, they didn't. And so I didn't think it mattered. So I voted yes to restricted and defined marriage in that way. Conversely, when canvassers found straight people who voted no on Prop 8 or no on question 1 in Maine, and again, the follow-up questions, do you know anyone who's gay or lesbian, same-sex relationship? And the person said, yes, I do. And yes, they talked to me about the amendment. It turns out that when there was a conversation, people who had those conversations were twice as likely to vote no on these proposed constitutional amendments. And because of that research, you know, from states that have gone through this question ahead of Minnesota, and because of the time that Minnesota has had to organize, we're the only state that has had 18 months to organize from the date that the question was moved on to the ballot by the state legislature to the time when we have to vote. That has allowed a statewide coalition to form, to build this infrastructure, to get word out across Minnesota, that conversations is something that hasn't been tried before these one-on-one very personal relationships that we rely on to share what this amendment would -- how it would impact us, how the state statute already impacts us, how our love is not lifted up in the same way that it is for straight couples. And that, in fact, this proposed amendment would limit the freedom to marry simply by singling out a certain group of people, people who fall in love with someone of the same gender, and tells us it's illegal to marry the person we love. If you just tuned in, this is Spirit in Action, we're speaking with Gene Burns and Liz Oppenheimer, both active in conversations dealing with the upcoming constitutional amendment that's proposed in Minnesota, the constitutional amendment to define marriage as one man, one woman, and the side effects that would have. Places where you can go to find more information on this would include mn, like in the abbreviation for Minnesota, mnunited.org. There's also vote no, and that's no as in kn-o-w, vote no, mn.org. Again, we're speaking with Gene and Liz, who have married under the care of Twin Cities Friends Meeting back in 2000. So they've been confronting these issues on a very personal level. There's a couple of things that the two of you said that I wanted to follow up on. Number one, Gene, I wanted to mention how brave you were to bring up conversation about this perhaps touchy area while someone was trying to stick a needle in your veins. That is not an optimal time. Perhaps to confront people as something that might be touchy. And part of what I thought, as you mentioned, bring up these conversations. One of the reasons these conversations don't happen is because we've got the societal norms that say one of the things you don't talk about is sex and mentioning anything beyond one man, one woman that's considered bringing up sex. And so asking people to have these conversations is, I think, pushing them to come out a bit further. I assume there's a lot of fear that goes with this and that the reason these conversations haven't happened is because it is considered risky behavior to speak up. First of all, Mark, there are actually two constitutional amendments we're facing in Minnesota this year. One is the marriage amendment and the other is an amendment to require voter ID. And we are working to defeat both. What I find to be a common connection between these two proposed amendments is that they each propose to set up barriers for groups that are already marginalized. And what about the issue? How much of a risk is it to encourage people to have these conversations? I've been surprised at how many people in these trainings that I've done across the state, how many people are very afraid to tackle getting over Minnesota nice and bringing up this issue. Because of this statewide culture of Minnesota nice, when someone asks you, "Hey, how are you? You expect the response to be fine?" And then you might say, "Oh, and what have you been up to? Oh, nothing much." And so we're actually coaching people and encouraging people to not take that bait. And that when someone asks, "Hey, how are you?" That it's okay to respond with, "Actually, I'm kind of troubled by something. Can I tell you about it?" And people seem to resonate with that opportunity to open the conversation and to change the path that we typically have gone down of just answering, "I'm fine. How are you? I'm fine too." I have not heard of a single person who has used that approach who has then been met with, "No, no, no. I don't really want to know." And it's actually opened the door for that conversation to be had, because we're still human. All of us are human. And when someone comes to us and says, "I'm actually troubled by something. I've actually been wrestling with something." People are really more likely to say, "What's going on?" And of course, that just allows us to be that transparent with the other person or people around us who are listening in on the conversation. And, Eugene, what's your experience with this? Actually, it is very scary to have conversations with people. I actually find it easier to have conversations with strangers than with people I know personally. We recently found out that a couple of people we have had a long-term relationship with are voting yes for religious reasons. And I found myself led to write a letter to them asking them for dialogue because one of them shut down dialogue right away. And it was an easy letter to write, but I found myself procrastinating about sending it. It's just a letter inviting them into conversation, just saying, "We value you and you don't have anything to risk." So, I do actually find it hard. I recently set up an event on Facebook. I turned 45 exactly one month before the election. And I don't really like my birthday, but another friend of mine did something like this around the Obama campaign and doing phone calls for her birthday. I said, "Maybe I can ask my friends to have conversations and to report on them." So, I created a Facebook event and said, "Here's my event between now and October 6th. Please have some number of conversations, some combination of 45, 4 or 5 or 9 or 45 conversations." And talk about them here. Talk about them. Take pictures of the people you're having conversations with. Let's encourage each other to do that. And one person posted, "Oh, good. Now I have an entry into a conversation." My friend turns 45 a month before the election, and she has asked me to have conversations. Are you willing to help me celebrate her birthday this way? And several people are like, "Oh, that's a great idea." So, people are actually looking for ways they're wanting to have ways into conversations. They're just not sure how to do that. Right. And I would say that's one of the things that's been so encouraging and inspiring about how this work to defeat the amendment has been playing out is so often we feel separate from the political process. And we feel kind of powerless. There's not much that I could do to influence anything except go vote. Because up until recently, things were pretty much decided by what was shown on television and talked about on radio or printed in the newspaper. The way that Minnesotans United has been running this campaign, it's really empowered every single Minnesotans to make a difference by going out and having conversations with people. And this includes the Friends School of Minnesota, which is a quicker school. It's K through eighth grade, and every year the eighth grade class is required to do a capstone project, a final project that they work on together, and they take time during the school year to identify what that project might be. The class of 2012 that graduated this past spring for their capstone project, they decided to make a video about taking a stance against the proposed marriage amendment. And they call their video, "Love is Love." I think you can find it on YouTube. As a group, they created this video, and they talked about people who they know, they talked about having this in the Constitution sets an unfair high bar, a barrier, and they talked about love is love. And there's no good reason to have this voted on, let alone put into the Constitution. So there just hasn't been work like this ever before in the 30 or 31 other states that have considered this sort of question on the ballot, and it's inspiring to see the number of people from a variety of religious backgrounds and faith traditions and walks of life who are just feeling like, "Yes, they can do something about it," and they're taking advantage of it by going to a training, learning how to have conversations, or just jumping in and doing their best to say, "This is important to me. Please vote no on the amendment." On the marriage amendment. This is an impressive possibility we have ahead of us. How many states currently define marriages, the one man, one woman rule, and by how much are we going to win in Minnesota? Well, again, I think you're asking us to speculate about by how much are we going to win. The polls have gone back and forth, and most of them have been within the margin of error. In terms of the number of states who have something on the books, a number of states, I think it's 30, do have constitutional prohibition, preventing same-sex couples from marrying, and then additional states have statutes. For example, Minnesota has a statute, or a DOMA, defensive marriage act. There is a national organization called Freedom to Mary. They've been really good at tracking which states have what sorts of either constitutional amendments, barring marriage for same-sex couples, or statutes, or civil unions, and pieces like that. I love hearing the stories, the individual contacts that you've had. I'm not sure if you've told me when yet, Liz, where it's felt to you like the tide moved in a different direction. Has that happened for you too? Yes, that has one of the more recent experiences. This occurred with someone who I didn't know. It actually was while I was phone banking. I had a conversation with a man named Mark, and he told me that I think he said that he had been married. He and his wife have been married for 25 years. They have kids, so I went through some of the questions of what are your concerns about allowing same-sex couples to get married. You mentioned that you're married for 25 years now, and what was that like? What made you propose? Tell me about what marriage meant to you, and why you wanted to take that step. So he shared his story. We talked some about civil unions that he thought civil unions might be an option for same-sex couples, and I was able to tell him, "Well, there's no such thing as that in Minnesota, and that would cost money and take a lot of time to put something like that in place, and we're probably going to hear ads from the "yes" side of the campaign, pointing people to just give them civil unions, but the reality is no such thing exists to give us. And civil unions, would you trade your marriage for a civil union?" And he thought about that for a little bit, because nothing conveys marriage to society other than marriage. But what really seemed to get him to think more deeply about the issues, I started asking him about the gay and lesbian people he might have in his life, and he said, "Well, actually, I'm thinking about my kids." He maybe mentioned that they were getting ready to go into high school. I don't remember if he gave their ages, but he said, "My kids have friends who are gay or lesbian, and they hang out, and it's fine for them to, you know, I don't have a problem with people being gay or lesbian." So I said, "Well, what might be like if one of your kids' friends, as they got older, were to fall in love with someone of the same gender because they identify as gay and lesbian, and they wanted to get married? What do you think about that?" He said something that really surprised me. He said, "I hadn't thought about that. I hadn't thought about my kids." And suddenly it wasn't about his kids' friends anymore. It was about his kids, his own kids. Either he doesn't know how they identify, or maybe he has a suspicion of how they identify. I chose not to ask him that. But by the end of the conversation, and this was a conversation that maybe was eight or ten minutes long, not your usual phone bank conversation, by the end of the conversation he said, "You gave me something to think about that I hadn't thought before, and I'll really have to think about this now." And so it really is possible to get people to think more deeply about what they're saying, what they've been told, what they've been taught or preached about, and to step around that and think about the actual people in their lives who they know. And that too is a strategy that has not been used anywhere else to actually make gay people real, to get people thinking about people they already know who are already being impacted by this. And it invites people onto a journey that they haven't been invited to before with a lot of gentle listening and gentle questioning and being careful not to judge them even as they wrestle with something. You said, Liz, that this happened when you're on the phone bank. I'm assuming this is a phone bank for Minnesotans United, for all families. It's part of that. So he evidently called a phone number. He was being proactive in some way. What is the invitation like? Who is supposed to be calling that phone number? Well, it's the volunteers who are working to defeat the proposed amendment, the proposed marriage amendment. There are different ways that people can volunteer. Some is going door knocking and having a similar conversation when someone answers the door and is willing to talk. In this case, I volunteered that particular night and Jean volunteered with me as well to participate in a phone bank. And so public voter roles are available. And all of us who are phone banking or door knocking. I guess not door knocking. I can't speak to that. But all of us who are phone banking are given a list of people to call or else there's an automatic dialer that just calls up the next appropriate person to call. We simply start off by saying, Hi, I'm calling for Mark. My name is Liz is Mark there. And once Mark comes to the phone, you know, we introduce ourselves. You know, I'm calling from Minnesotans United, for all families. We're asking people tonight. If you had to vote on the issue of the marriage amendment, and then we read, we actually read the wording. And then we just go into it. How would you vote tonight on the question if you had to vote tonight? And then we take it from there. Usually they give us an answer and then we start following a script that goes into some of these questions. One of the reasons that we need to talk to people is people are confused about it. On my way home from the state fair a few days ago, a woman engaged me in a conversation asking me if I knew when the bus was coming. So we talked and I found out that she worked at the fair and she was in the parade on stilts. And so I asked her some questions about the fair. And she happened to tell me that she just moved to Minnesota two months ago. So I asked her if she was registered to vote. She said, Yes, indeed she was. And so then I launched. And again, this was easy for me because this was a stranger. But here's another reason why it's important. So I asked her. I said, So do you know that there are two amendments that were going to be voting on this year? And she said, No, she didn't. And so I said, All right. So the first one is about voter ID. And I talked to her a little bit about that. And she nodded her head and said she would vote no. And then I said, there's a marriage amendment. I said, Do you know about that one? And she said, No. And I said. And I recited to her the language of it. And before I finished, she said, Oh, yes. Yes, I'm definitely voting. Yes. I said, Can you tell me more about that? And then she said, Oh, I want them to be able to marry. And I said, I'm confused now. And she said, I want gay and lesbian people to be able to get married. I said, Oh, okay. So if you vote, yes. Do you realize that you're voting to ban gay marriage? And she said, Oh, I didn't realize that. I said, Yeah. If you support same sex marriage, you need to vote. No, because voting yes means they'll change the Constitution to say marriage should only be between one man and one woman. So there's a lot of confusion about the wording of the amendment. Not a lot of people have heard it or seen it. There's one more thing I would like to have your input on because I get a copy of the minutes from Twin Cities Friends meeting. I've read and followed movement within the Quaker meeting there about the decision not to act as the state's representative and supporting marriage only for heterosexuals. That meeting there said that until all people can marry, regardless of gender, that they're not going to do the legal step signing for the state. Were either of you involved in the process, bringing that up? And how did that go? Liz was very involved in that process. Well, it did start earlier when a similar amendment was being considered by the legislature and moving through committees. Twin Cities Friends meeting at that time, I think it was in the early 2000s, and this is on the Twin Cities Friends meeting website as well. There's a whole section dedicated to the minutes regarding marriage for same sex couples. But back then, because TCFM had been marrying same sex couples since 1986, the meeting did approve another minute taking a stance against any proposed amendment that would recognize marriage for one group, but not for another. And so that minute kind of resurfaced shortly after Iowa legalized marriage for same sex couples now five years ago. And some folks on Ministry and Council brought that before the meeting. Perhaps TCFM should look at doing something different because we can't marry all couples that we take under our care. You know, in terms of acting as an agent for the state. And so there were adult education sessions around it. There was a proposed minute read early on in the process that was thrashed, but wasn't approved. There was some worship sharing, some very rich worship sharing that came out of the business session. At some point, the ad hoc committee about looking at this sort of writing a minute that the meeting could consider, and I served on that ad hoc committee. Eventually, the ad hoc committee did bring forward a recommendation to meeting for worship for business. And it was just amazing how the meeting at the time just received it. And the clerk kept asking, is there anyone with any concerns? Is there anyone who wants to say anything? And we just fell into worship. And so after a number of minutes, the clerk simply tested the sense of the meeting that the minute be approved. And there was approval, and it stated initially as a trial period of three years. Because at this time, there wasn't a question on the ballot. And so we didn't know what was coming down the pike. And so that's what's happened. Well, I'm glad that you're both working against it. Again, we're talking to Jean Burns and Liz Oppenheimer. They're over in the Twin Cities of Minnesota, where there's a constitutional amendment about marriage equality or marriage inequality, I guess. Coming up, as well as another constitutional amendment about voter ID. Both Jean and Liz have been working against these. You want a website you can go to, minnesotansunited.org is mnunited.org. You can, of course, follow the links, that and more from nerdinspiritradio.org. Jean, Liz, I've known you for a number of years. I respect you highly. And I thank you so much for doing this work and for joining me for spirit and action. Well, thank you, Mark. Yeah, thank you, Mark, for asking us. The first two guests for spirit and action were Liz Oppenheimer and Jean Burns. Both volunteers with Minnesotans United for all families. Website mnunited.org. We'll turn directly to another activist in the work to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment. Limiting Minnesotans marriage to one man, one woman, on their November ballot. There are many fine organizers within Minnesotans United. But I chose to speak with the director of their faith department. So we go now to the Twin Cities to speak with Grant Stevenson. Grant, welcome to spirit and action. Hi, Mark. Thank you. It's nice to be here. I was told by Liz Oppenheimer that you are the director of Minnesota United's faith department. Working on this constitutional amendment or specifically against this constitutional amendment that's happening in Minnesota, what is the faith department? And maybe, first, you'll have to tell me what Minnesota United is, what kind of organization? Sure. Minnesota United for all families is the campaign that's working to defeat the marriage amendment here in Minnesota. So we have, as a part of our campaign, the kind of field staff that you would find normally on a campaign. But in addition to that, we have my department, the faith department, where we have a number of people working with congregations to have conversations with their members, as well as clergy who are banding together, clergy who are united against this marriage amendment, both to support each other, but also to share resources in terms of talking to their congregations and their communities about this amendment and what it means and why it should be defeated. You know, I think there's probably a lot of people out there who assume, because the evangelical right has had such a large portion of the mind space, they would assume that almost all churches are opposed to homosexuality, and that specifically marriage has to be just for a man and a woman. That's not the case. What's your faith tradition? I myself am a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, so that's the largest body of Lutherans in the United States, also the largest body of Lutherans in Minnesota. In Minnesota, we are broken up geographically in the Lutheran Church in what we call synods. There are six synods in Minnesota, five of the six synods voted this year to encourage their membership to oppose the marriage amendment. We don't think that this marriage amendment is good for the members of our congregations, members who are gay and lesbian, but also members of our congregations who have family and friends who are gay and lesbian, so we're encouraging people to vote no. What's the difference in point of view that allows Minnesota Lutherans to oppose this amendment, whereas Michelle Bachman or other people of perhaps more Evangelical or conservative or fundamentalist point of view say that no, this is God's, will God's marriage is just a man and a woman? What's the difference that allows these faith traditions to see things so differently? Well, I don't know, Mark, that I'm very good at speaking about the insights into the motivations of the people who are supporting this marriage amendment, but I can say that in my tradition and for many of the people of faith who work with this campaign, we know that there are some very basic kind of bottom line values that guide our life and we hope would guide the way we live in the world, one of which is when we were growing up, we used to call the golden rule. You know, treat other people the way that you yourself would like to be treated. That's pretty, pretty basic stuff. And so that certainly guides you. And I would imagine that Wisconsin Synod Lutherans or Missouri Synod Lutherans would also say that they subscribe to that. As a matter of fact, I grew up in the Wisconsin Synod and I guess that's probably where I learned the golden rule. Okay, so again, there's some dividing line. For some reason, that doesn't get applied to gays and particularly gay rights in terms of marriage. Do you have any clues for me why they go down that road or maybe you were down that road when you were younger? To be honest, I never really was down that road. When I was a kid, I was in the Wisconsin Synod Lutheran Church. I was taught in general that there were people to stay away from and people to attach to, the people to attach to, mainly were other Wisconsin Synod Lutheran people. But I don't actually think as a child, I really knew about gay and lesbian people. It certainly never came up in our congregation or in conversations even with my family that I can remember. Again, you're the director of the faith department of Minnesota's United for All Family. What other faith congregations, faith traditions are involved in this group? Is it all just Lutherans? Because Minnesota is pretty heavy duty in Lutherans. We are. There's about 800,000 Lutherans in Minnesota, but there's also 1.2 million Catholics in the state of Minnesota. And there are many, many Catholics who are involved in the work that we're doing through our office and on this campaign. Many Catholics who this coming week, what we call Faith Action Week actually, are organizing house parties to learn themselves and train other people how to have conversations about the amendment with friends and family so that people can be in conversation around this, around the state of Minnesota. That's by the way, one of the reasons that I find it so difficult to answer one of the questions that you asked, which is, you know, really about what drives people on the other side on this thing. I guess I don't want to presume to know. What I do want to do is say to people in churches and faith communities and families and businesses in Minnesota, you ought to ask, get in conversation with people and find out what is it they think, what motivates them, and share with them what motivates you and what moves your soul and what moves your heart. You know, I'm sure a lot of people are tempted to do the biblical argument about this. And as we just heard from Liz and Jean, that is a route that is not very fruitful. It hasn't seemed to have borne fruit in previous cases. Are you tempted to argue the Bible and say, here are these six verses, why haven't you chosen that route? I think, Mark, if you listen to the conversation that has happened over the last two or four thousand years around sacred scripture, you know, what we see is that people of good will and people of good faith read scripture from different points of view, read different pieces of it as being important and in the end, sometimes even take away quite different messages. So to argue with someone, you know, about a point of view of scripture often leads no place. It's like, you know, a twin fan or better yet maybe a Viking fan arguing with a Packers fan, you know, about which team is better. And they both, of course, will have very fine arguments. But at the end of the day, they both walk away fans of the team that they were fans of before they started that conversation. Because there was really no meeting of souls, really no meeting of the minds, really no real conversation, just adjusting with facts and figures and personal perspectives. So what has been your experience in terms of talking to people about this? Are you doing the trainings also to get people into these conversations? Are you helping organize that? What's your role? I do help organize them. I'm not the person on our staff who's done the most of the trainings, but I do them and have done them. I think that for the most part, for many people, and you know, sometimes I'm one of them, it is difficult to think, you know, I feel real tempted to argue right now, but it's not really going to get me any place, not really. I mean, none of us ever really wins an argument if you think about it. But we do once in a while touch each other by sharing our experiences and our lives and our relationships with one another. And that's what we're really encouraging people to do. So if you've been doing this training, are you training specifically people who are part of some faith tradition? Are you just training the general populace? Who are the other churches and faith bodies that are involved with Minnesota United for all families? So as we've talked about, there are many Lutherans who are involved, but there are also many, many Catholics who are involved in these conversation trainings and in hosting them at their homes this coming Faith Week, Faith Action Week, we call it. But there are also many other denominations that we haven't mentioned, and it's almost every denomination that you can think of, including many members of the Jewish community, Mormons, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists. You've got to have the UCC in there. Absolutely. The UCC is actually, in many cases, kind of cornerstone to a lot of the work that we do, as well as the Unitarians. And don't forget us Quakers. And of course, the Quakers. Of course. And numerically, is this balanced, or is this, because there's more Catholics in the state, does that mean that you're heavy laden with Catholics going out doing this work? I would say it is not balanced, but there is large representation from all of the traditions that we just talked about. There are many Catholics, which is great when you consider that Catholic churches themselves. They get really no institutional support for this work. These meetings never happen inside Catholic churches. They happen inside the homes of Catholic people. There are many Lutherans involved, many, many United Church of Christ people involved, which is pretty impressive because it's a relatively small denomination. Many, many Unitarians involved. One of the lists that I was a little bit surprised about was the Mormons. Again, the Mormon Church as a whole has not been favorable in this direction. I understand that perhaps about 20% of Mormons see themselves as liberal, if this is, in fact, a liberal question. But you have Mormons showing up. That's right. We have Mormons who are very, very active in volunteering to be in conversation and train people in conversation in Mormon churches. It's really been kind of an amazing and inspiring movement. I think people tend to know that the Mormon Church has played roles as have the Catholic Church on the other side on this issue in other states, particularly in California. I think in Minnesota, we're not seeing that. And part of the reason that we're not seeing that is that there are Mormons involved in saying both to each other and to the leadership of that church. So this isn't what our church should be about. When I was speaking earlier with Jean and Liz, Liz, I believe, was mentioned something about Minnesota and Nice playing role in terms of having these conversations. How hard is it to bring up the conversation of sexual identity and particularly how this marriage amendment would affect people who are not with the mainstream? How hard is that to bring up in the land of Minnesota and Nice? Yeah, maybe by Minnesota and Nice, sometimes what we mean is we don't really want to talk about anything that could be considered in any way controversial. Maybe that's what we mean by Minnesota, Nice, and I think if there's any difficulty in this work, Mark, I would say it's not the efforts of the other side so much as it is all of us and our own reluctance to be vulnerable with each other and open our lives to each other and have conversations with each other about what really matters most to us. So if that's what Minnesota, Nice is about, then I probably in agreement with Liz. So what do you do to encourage people to go beyond their comfort zone? I mean, do you feed them spinach so they're strong like Popeye or what do you do? You know, we haven't tried that and I think probably we should try that. I know when I'm leading trainings and I think this is true for others in our department who are leading trainings, we help people get grounded in not how uncomfortable it might be to have a conversation but how important it is for them to have it. Actually, when people come in the room, almost the first question we ask them is, tell the person that you're sitting next to who you're here for. You know, maybe it's yourself, maybe it's your daughter or your son or your niece or nephew. Who are you here for? And sometimes I like to ask the question, when did it occur to you that this amendment was going to hurt that person? That has a way of grounding people in a place of concern and a place of love. I think that's what's necessary for all of us when we're going to do something that's really uncomfortable for us. I was wondering if besides the fact that you're an ELCA Lutheran minister, besides that fact, is there something that specifically has drawn you to this work? I mean, you obviously could be very busy being a pastor. Did you really need something else to keep you off the streets? I really didn't. You're right. I have plenty of things to do. I have to say, though, Mark, when I was asked to do this, my initial response was, boy, I don't know. I don't know if that's really me, if I should lead that. I had been very active and still am in a lot of issues that I think are of a large concern for people of faith. But when I thought about friends of mine who are gay and lesbian and some of whom are in very long-term relationships, one of whom is married but not here in Minnesota in another state, and I thought about how close to home this is for their lives. I mean, I'm a straight man. I'm married to a woman. But when I thought about how close to home this is for people who I really care about and love, it just felt like this was the wrong time to not engage. So if you entered into one of these conversations, which Minnesota United for All Families is advocating, what's your piece of vulnerability or is it all principle that you have to talk about? How do you address it? If not just principle, there are a number of stories I tell either about myself or about other people. One of the most profound for me, I don't know if other people experience it that way, is when I learned as a child in junior high, I believe I was, about what happened to Jewish folks. In Germany, what struck me as so profound about that was I had never heard about it. And that's odd because I myself am German and I come from a German church. I'd never heard about what happened in the Holocaust and it happened among my people and I couldn't imagine how on earth could something like that happen. Later on in my 20s, I was talking to my mother about an issue that I was involved in and had to do with Nicaragua. She said, "Oh boy, I don't really think that's your issue." And at that moment, I remember almost like scales falling off my eyes, like the question I'd been asking for 10 years, how could this happen among my people? I kind of had scales fall off my eyes and think, "That's how you can distance yourself from something and say that really doesn't have anything to do with me." And so when I was first asked to contribute in the faith director for this position, my answer was, "Oh, I don't know." And I thought, "Oh my goodness." There's the scales that need to drop off, right? That's right, and it took until the middle of the night that night, I went to bed and woke up around 3 in the morning thinking, "Holy smokes, I sound like my mom." Which in some cases is a good thing, let's not make a mistake there, right? She says a lot of good things, right? She's a beautiful human being, which is what's so shocking and startling about that insight. It's not wicked evil people who allow evil to flourish in the world, it's good people. How big of an organization are we talking about here? Minnesotans United for All Families, tens of thousands of people spread across the state. When I called in, I heard a busy help up going there. I think there's a lot of people on the phones. There are a lot of people on the phones here today. We're in the middle of what they call a beginning of a weekend of action. We had at the Minnesota State Fair over 4,000 people sign up to volunteer during a weekend of action, which begins today. People are on the phones calling Minnesotans, talking to them about this amendment and what it means to them. It's very, very similar to the work that we're doing in the faith department. We just have these conversations inside faith communities and congregations. So that's what you heard in the background. There are thousands of volunteers for Minnesotans United for All Families. We have donations for this campaign on our mostly small scale and come from about 28,000 donors. Almost all of them are from the state of Minnesota. That distinguishes us in a really profound way from Minnesotans from air to the other campaign. Most of their donations are very large and many of them come from outside the state of Minnesota. One more thing, and I'm pretty sure this is going to be hard for you to estimate because I don't think people carry their spiritual religious affiliation around on their sleeves. I mean, I assume there's, you know, Buddhists or Native Americans. Oh my gosh, I forgot to mention the Buddhists that I did. There are, yes. Yeah, there are all of them there, but they don't necessarily carry a label on them or specific clothing that identifies them. Of course, I also assume there's secular humanists and there's everybody across the entire spectrum there. All stepping forward to do this really good work. My question is, do you have any idea at all how it might shake out in terms of actively religious in some form versus not? Because I think most people, again, given the prejudices and the stereotypes about religious people in this country, most people, I think, I'm going to assume that being religious would tend to not get you involved in this kind of anti-constitutional amendment work. I think that is the assumption, but it's an assumption that really couldn't be further from the truth. When the legislature in Minnesota put this on the ballot, which was May 21st, 2011, one of the very first tables to organize itself was a table of religious leaders from multiple denominations and religious traditions. Almost from day one, people of faith were saying, this is not the way to go. For our faith community, it's not the way to go from Minnesota. Well, I'm so thankful that these communities have stepped forward so strongly, visibly, powerfully to perhaps, and I'll say that, God willing, to make Minnesota the first state to refuse to approve one of these such amendments. I'm very hopeful. I mean, Minnesota and Wisconsin, of course, have long traditions of stepping forward where other people fear to tread. And so I'm really praying for you over in Minnesota, and I'm thankful for your work, Grant, and all the people at Minnesota United for All Families. And thanks for joining me for spirit and action. Thank you so much, Mark. Grant Stevenson is Director of the Faith Department of Minnesotans United for All Families, and earlier we spoke with volunteers Jean Burns and Liz Oppenheimer. Check out their work at mnunited.org, or just follow the links from NortonSpiritRadio.org, and we'll see you next week for Spirit in Action. The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of NorthernSpiritRadio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone. With every voice, with every song, we will know this world alone, and our lives will feel the echo of our healing. (upbeat music)