Michele Bachmann Manages a Close Win in Minnesota

Michele Bachmann

Michele Bachmann yet again eked out a win in her Minnesota district and returns to Congress with severely antigay views.

With 100& of districts reporting, Bachmann had 50.6% of the vote in the sixth district, compared to 49.4% for Democratic challenger Jim Graves. Only 4,207 votes separated them.

The title of queen (so to speak) of the country's antigay congressional candidates had to go to Bachmann. The failed presidential candidate had described being gay as “bondage” and “part of Satan,” and her husband Marcus’s counseling clinics offer so-called reparative therapy, a widely discredited practice aimed at turning gay people straight (the Bachmanns have denied the clinics provide this type of therapy, but undercover investigations indicate they do).

Minnesota voters returned her to Congress even as the state rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have banned same-sex marriage (which is already banned there by state law). Remember it was Michele who first proposed the idea, as a member of the state legislature in 2004. Without the amendment, she said at the time, “sex curriculum would essentially be taught by the gay community” and “little K-12 children will be forced to learn that homosexuality is normal, natural, and perhaps they should try it.”

She has even claimed that the high rate of suicide among gay teens is due simply to being gay, not to bullying or discrimination. All this despite having a lesbian stepsister.