Minn. Gays Take Responsibility for Right-Winger’s Affair

With right-wing forces accusing gays of undermining marriage by seeking access to the institution, a Minnesota resident has "apologized" on behalf of gay people for causing an antigay state senator to have an extramarital affair.

Senate majority leader Amy Koch (pictured), a Republican, admitted this week to having had an "inappropriate relationship" with a Senate staff member, according to Twin Cities alternative weekly City Pages. Koch has backed the effort to amend the state's constitution to ban same-sex marriage; the amendment, having been approved by the legislature, will go before voters in November.

An open letter from John Medeiros of Minneapolis apologizes to Koch "on behalf of all gays and lesbians living in Minnesota ... 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."

Medeiros also writes, "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.'" Read the City Pages coverage, including the full letter, here.