An open letter to Minnesota state senator Amy Koch

It doesn't appear to count toward the tally at GayHomophobe.com (where it's now been 6 days since the last time a homophobic public figure turned out to be queer), but Minnesota state senator Amy Koch has joined the vaunted ranks of politicians who are deeply concerned about the sanctity of all marriages except their own. The married Koch recently resigned as Senate majority leader after word got out that she'd had an "inappropriate relationship" with a male staffer.

Koch is a major force behind the attempt to enshrine special rights for straight people into Minnesota's constitution, so you might have thought she'd treat her own magical straight marriage with the respect it deserves. John Medeiros, co-curator of Minneapolis' Intermedia Arts' Queer Voices reading series, can only conclude that lapse into blatant hypocrisy must, somehow, be the fault of queer people. So, he's written an open letter, apologizing to Senator Koch, on behalf of queer Minnesotans, for forcing her to betray the sanctity of straight marriage.

Dear Ms. Koch,

On behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize for our community's successful efforts to threaten your traditional marriage. We are ashamed of ourselves for causing you to have what the media refers to as an "illicit affair" with your staffer, and we also extend our deepest apologies to him and to his wife. These recent events have made it quite clear that our gay and lesbian tactics have gone too far, affecting even the most respectful of our society.

We apologize that our selfish requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of sexual harassment of a subordinate.

It is now clear to us that if we were not so self-focused and myopic, we would have been able to see that the time you wasted diligently writing legislation that would forever seal the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman, could have been more usefully spent reshaping the legal definition of "adultery."

Forgive us. As you know, we are not church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that "gay marriage" is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.

And finally, shame on us for thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage would have little impact on anyone's family. We now see that marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.

From the bottom of our hearts, we ask that you please accept our apology.

Thank you.
John Medeiros
Minneapolis MN

Thank you, City Pages!/p>

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: Amy Koch • homophobia • LULZ • marriage • Minnesota • politics

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Mike Norman

Maybe I’m especially easy to please today, but this strikes me as the new Best Thing Ever (TM).
http://mordicai.livejournal.com Mordicai

Normally I’d find this malicious glee unbecoming, but hey, when you are a giant bigot the amount of fucks I give about your feelings really drops.
monopole

Don’t sweat it
John, it wan’t all your fault. Amy was to paraphrase Newt was partially driven by how passionately she felt about this country, that she worked far too hard and that things happened in her life that were not appropriate.

Only true patriots have affairs! (except Clinton of course!)
http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker

I like to think that this is the work of the bisexual commandos: We destroy straight marriage from the inside!
oasisob1

You know, if she takes it as a heartfelt apology, she may continue the fight to save the sanctity of marriage with renewed energy. *BACKFIRE!*
Ashen Victor

Hey! Do I detect some subtle sarcasm?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggXmKPMaHMo
PhosPhorious

Weapons grade snark. FTW.
fuzzbo

Gotta love the comments in the City Pages….

http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/12/gay_marriage_amy_koch_michael_brodkorb.php#Comments
http://www.lightning-rose.com/ LightningRose

Apparently, her definition of marriage is one man, one woman, and some dick on the side for her.
http://twitter.com/martchand Martain Chandler

Teh Comedy Gold!
http://www.chrisrusak.com Chris Rusak

Everyone should take a moment to thank her on Twitter: @amysd19
Brainspore

There are so few female politicians represented in today’s “hypocritical sex scandal” crowd. Way to break through that glass ceiling! (Or mirrored ceiling, depending on personal kinks.)
- http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker
  
  That thought occurred to me, too, Brainspore. Part of me really wants to be like, “You go girl! Way to abuse your power over a subordinate just like the boys do!”
  - http://twitter.com/kcmpls Kassie
    
    Except suspected subordinate may actually have more power than her and she may actually, in a weird sort of way, be the victim here. At minimum, I’d say they are peers, though she was technically his superior, he held enough weight with the party to control money to her future campaigns and could have taken her down if he wanted to.
    - http://maggiekb.com/ Maggie Koerth-Baker
      
      Oh, damn. That’s disappointing.
      
      Women politicians: It’s high time one of you fondled an intern. Let’s get on that. For equality!
      - Brainspore
        
        The bar is set pretty high (low?)… if they ever want to catch up then one of them is going to have to have to bang an underage illegal immigrant lesbian prostitute drug dealer pretty darn soon.
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QZLVTMNIPDVPOGSCTZ5P7GKK6E p!ssirk

In a side note, I was particularly struck by the irony of Elton John (in a very long-term same-sex relationship) playing music at Rush Limbaugh’s 3rd wedding? 4th? 5th?

“Family Values!”
- marilove
  
  He explained that. He likes to get paid, and he likes playing music, and he’s not all that into politics. *shrug*
  - morcheeba
    
    Elton has no explaining to do… it’s Rush that does.
    
    Also, the stats: Wife #4, $1 million (alleged but disputed) to Elton’s AIDS charity.
SomeGuy

Sounds like he did “take her down”.

Meant as a reply to Kassie Church above’
unit_1421

With less than 50% of Americans even bothering to get married anymore and more than 50% of those who do getting divorced, aren’t we BHT* folks kind of jumping onto a sinking ship? Yes yes, those 1138 legal entitlements are important, but the bulk of Christian sects are NEVER going to embrace us with open arms (they would prefer embrace us with flame throwers and welcome us into gas chambers). They know they are increasingly in the minority with their views, but until they get over it they’re going to get more desperate and violent, so please keep your guard up.

*As a bisexual, I choose to refer to homosexual males and females simply as homosexuals, because the slang phrases for bisexuals are just as insufferable to us as the ones for homosexuals are to them. I also feel the alphabet soup of monikers just makes things harder on all of us and we should keep things simple. As Carlin once said; “Twat’s twat and that’s that.”
- marilove
  
  It seems to me that it took you far, far longer to explain what you meant by BHT (I had no idea) than it would have been just to type out the standard, “LGBT” (or “LGBQT”), which is quite universally understood now. Basically, each time you choose to use “BHT” you will have to explain yourself, because I promise you that it will never catch on and you will constantly confuse people. So what’s the point?
  - unit_1421
    
    The point is to annoy you and to make things generally irritating.
    - marilove
      
      I was not annoyed at all, just confused why you think BHT is ever going to catch on. I will agree with this, though: because the slang phrases for bisexuals are just as insufferable to us as the ones for homosexuals are to them.
      - Snig
        
        Also, BHT is already taken.
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butylated_hydroxytoluene
        I’m for LBGT issues, but am leary of BHT (and BHA) in food products.
- Brainspore
  
  With less than 50% of Americans even bothering to get married anymore and more than 50% of those who do getting divorced…
  
  I don’t want to imply that everybody really ought to get married but those stats aren’t quite accurate.
  
  1) Just under 50% of American adults are currently married but that doesn’t mean that less than 50% will be married at some point in their lives. The number includes all the over-18s who haven’t gotten hitched yet but may down the road, as well as all the divorcees and widowed folks. Not to mention all the adults who would marry their partners if they legally could.
  
  2) Just because around 50% of marriages end in divorce doesn’t mean that 50% of people who get married will experience a divorce. You can only stay married your entire life once, but you can divorce and remarry as many times as you want. If you took a sample pool including Elizabeth Taylor and seven people who remained faithful their entire lives the statistics would show a 50% divorce rate across the group.
  - Brainspore
    
    And this nerdy bit of pendantry is what finally tipped me toward reaching my arbitrarily chosen goal of “Ten Thousand ‘Likes’ on BoingBoing.” That’s my cue to take a break from commenting for a while, see y’all on the flipside.
Snig

Brodkorb (her bit on the side) is/was an old school comics fan, referenced Matter Eater Lad:
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2011/12/michael_brodkorb_twitter_amy_koch.php
So it’s really likely more the fault of sites like BB that glorifies geekiness, women now find us too hot to pass up. It’s such a curse.
http://ravenlunatick.wordpress.com/ ravenlunatick

So when will the BB store be carrying t-shirts that say, “Bisexual Commandos: we destroy straight marriage from the inside”?

-catty-
That_Anonymous_Coward

The ones screaming the loudest have the most to hide.
Why is it no one ever seems to learn this lesson?
SoItBegins

Oh god, the saaaaaarcasm. I’m falling into the saaaaar-chasm.
stuck411

If legalizing gay marriage causes more cheap & tawdry sex, then I say: BRING IT ON!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Have you seen the people involved?
  - Andrew Singleton
    
    Like it matters? Anything to distract from the politico diddling going on.
    
    Really.
    
    Yes happy stable relationships like Elton John’s are boring, but hey. With same sex marrige legalized we’d have a bit more variety to the proceedings ya?
    - That_Anonymous_Coward
      
      You need to think of the bigger picture, think of how many more couples could appear on Maury for lie detector tests to prove their bf/spouse/fiance isn’t cheating on them….
Anahata

In her resignation statement, Koch said: “While I have not violated any laws or Senate rules,…”
http://www.senate.mn/members/member_pr_display.php?ls=&id=4221

Actually, in Minnesota adultery *is* a crime. Adulterers “may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both.” Here’s the statute on the Minnesota government’s site:
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/?id=609.36
- That_Anonymous_Coward
  
  They need to push to make them enforce the law.
  This odious woman needs to get everything she deserves.
benher

What the hell is up with Minnesota and it’s freak right-wing bigot spawning in the last decade? Didn’t we used to pride ourselves on being a gay friendly state?Also, I’m trying to think of a way to make a lude Koch-sucker funny but it’s just not happening…