Smart People Into Kicking Emmer

SPIKE! Can you dig it? If you can come up with a better acronym, let me know. Tom Emmer must go down in flames come November.

There are so many reasons to detest Emmer that it's hard to pick just one. Regressive tax policy? Slashing our state's already pathetic social safety net? Support for racial profiling laws like Arizona's? Ugh. All of these positions are typical of a person who refuses, as the Native American aphorism goes, to walk a mile in another person's moccasins. If Emmer wants to experience the freedom from government that he claims to want, he ought to visit Mogadishu. While he's there, he can ask how many of the remaining citizens have relatives who emigrated to Minnesota. I suspect he'll find quite a few, as the Twin Cities area has the largest concentration of Somali expats in North America, and I don't think they came because they preferred the weather.

Last week I wrote up a press release on behalf of Minnesota NOW on what was just the latest evidence of Emmer's indifference to people who neither look, think, nor love like him:

October 13, 2010

All Minnesotans, regardless of party affiliation, are shocked by the recent spike in gay teen suicides across the nation. Here at home, 15-year-old Anoka resident Justin Aaberg took his own life in July, a desperate act his mother believes was motivated by unchecked bullying at her son’s school. Minnesota NOW, as a partner in the Safe Schools for All Coalition, hopes that renewed attention to this public health emergency will finally increase momentum for anti-bullying legislation that could do so much to protect vulnerable adolescents.

But that won’t happen if Tom Emmer is elected Governor, warns Shannon Drury, State President of Minnesota NOW.

When Rep. Emmer was asked by a Fox 9 debate moderator on October 9 how he’d respond to this crisis, Emmer said he does not support this kind of legislation. Rep. Emmer said, “we should all be able to have [our] point of view and respect each other but we don’t need more laws trying to get in between people.”

With this statement, Emmer implied that bullies are entitled to their so-called “point of view,” even as they harass and intimidate their peers quite literally to death. “Sexism and racism are also points of view,” says Drury. “Would Governor Emmer fail to enforce other Minnesota civil rights statutes as well?”

Minnesota NOW, the Safe Schools for All Coalition, and a bipartisan majority in the State Legislature supported the Safe Schools for All Bill that was vetoed by Governor Tim Pawlenty in May 2009. Today, State Senator Scott Dibble and Representative Jim Davnie (both DFL-Minneapolis) announced plans to re-introduce this bill in the upcoming special session. Minnesota NOW’s statewide membership applauds the Senators for moving this important bill forward.

Rep. Emmer claims “we don’t need more laws,” yet he supports a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage (Source: http://www.emmerforgovernor.com/issues/socialvalues/). “Apparently, Emmer does support more laws, after all—laws that reinforce his social agenda at others’ expense,” Drury says.

“Minnesotans are compassionate people. They want to do whatever they can to prevent another death like Justin Aaberg’s. They don’t want other parents to have to do what Tammy Aaberg did—bury her child.”