Politics: Minnesotans Act Out and Speak Out
May 6th, 2005,A couple of Star Tribune articles recently caught my attention.
Buried in the Metro section of May 3, the first article concerned a family from Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Phil and Randi Reitan, along with their son Jacob, who is gay, were arrested in Colorado Springs, Colorado, for trespassing on the grounds of Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization that opposes homosexuality. The family carried a letter that they wanted to deliver to the organization’s leader, Dr. James Dobson. Approximately 150 supporters of the Reitans watched as they were arrested on May 2.
The Reitans belong to a group known as Soulforce, a national faith-based group that protests the propagation of anti-gay messages in churches. Several hundred Soulforce members participated in a rally held just outside the Focus on the Family campus on Sunday, May 1.
The article has this quote from Phil Reitan about his attempt to deliver the letter: “I said, ‘I’m an attorney. I’m a Christian. I’m a father who loves my family more than anything. This is important because every day Dr. Dobson assaults my family. We need to get this message to him so we’re going to deliver [the letter].’ ”
“We wanted to say focus on our family for one day, Dr. Dobson,” said Jacob Reitan. “See how we did it. We aren’t just here to deliver a letter, we’re here to deliver ourselves to him.”
Soulforce founder Mel White said the Reitan’s act was part of their effort to bring national attention to the issue. “When the Reitans walked into that mass of cameras and said, ‘We love our gay son,’ whoever hears that will be moved,” White said. “That’s a message to the nation that’s never been seen. It wasn’t for Dobson. We’re using Dobson to send a message to the nation.”
I recommend reading the letter that the Reitan’s attempted to deliver. For more information, see Soulforce’s press release about the protest, Focus on the Family’s article on the same, and articles in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
On the U.S. Senate Filibuster
The second article that caught my attention was an op-ed piece. Former U.S. senators from Minnesota, Walter Mondale and David Durenberger, recently co-wrote a Star Tribune op-ed piece against the proposed rule changes in the U.S. Senate that would end the minority party’s right to filibuster judicial nominees.
The two make a persuasive case that ending the filibuster would, in their words, “profoundly and permanently undermine the purpose of the U.S. Senate as it has stood since Thomas Jefferson first wrote the Senate’s rules.” They argue that these rules–which now allow any senator to speak for an unlimited period of time unless there is a 60-vote majority in favor of ending debate–create a more deliberative body than the U.S. House. And that deliberation produces better courts, they argue. “This Senate rule has led to a stronger, less partisan, truly independent court,” they write. Ending the filibuster, they argue, will mean that “[t]he courts will be seen less as independent tribunals that transcend politics and instead will become, increasingly, agents of political passions.”
The op-ed piece represents a bipartisan effort, since Mondale is a Democrat and Durenberger is a Republican. As a moderate Republican, Durenberger finds himself increasingly on the margin of his party. Last fall he endorsed Sen. John Kerry’s health care plan as superior to that of President Bush.
Among others, conservative columnist George Will has argued against ending the filibuster for approval of judicial nominees. He argued instead that Republicans should focus on gaining a 60-seat majority in the Senate.
For another view of the recent history of the filibuster as it relates to judicial nominees, see an analysis by David Espo of the Associated Press.