Dear neighbors,
Today, the Minnesota House of Representatives passed the Marriage Equality Act, ensuring that same-sex couples have the freedom to marry the person they love. The measure passed on a bipartisan vote of 75 to 59 and I voted in favor of the bill.
The Marriage Equality Act would allow civil marriages for all Minnesotans—the kind you get at City Hall—and protect religious freedoms for congregations or clergy who do not support same-sex marriage. The religious protections in the bill are the strongest of any state that has legalized same-sex marriage and strike an important balance between religious freedom and civil liberties.
As some of you know, I grew up in a pretty strict Catholic family. Nothing bad was said about gay folks, but there was an understanding that gay was not a good way to be. My family thought what most other folks did at that time—that being gay was a choice. I grew up thinking I didn’t know any gay people. When you think you don’t know any gay people, ensuring that they have equal rights is the furthest thing from your mind.
When I went off to college, I lived in a house with a dozen other men. Halfway through my freshman year, several of them came out as gay. I was shocked, but I had lived with these guys for half a year so my shock was limited to the realization that I had no indication that these men were gay. I sought to understand my friends by asking typical “when did you know you were gay?” questions, and they were pretty understanding about it.
Something else significant happened my freshman year. I got a call from Matt Pickos, my best friend from high school. I spent a lot of time cruising the back roads of Edgerton, Wisconsin with Matt—getting in trouble, meeting girls etc. Even in school, Matt and I were inseparable. Sometime in my senior year, Matt developed an intense dislike for me and I never knew why. We stopped hanging out, he stopped asking me to come home with him on weekends, and ignored me in the dining hall.
So when he called me my freshman year of college I felt we had a lot to catch up on. I told him that a few guys in the house I lived at came out as gay. “Can you believe that?” I said. Matt responded, “John, you’re such an idiot. I’m gay.” Matt and I still did not talk much after that. Our lives had changed. Even after Matt’s revelation, it took me years to realize how that played into Matt’s sudden anger toward me in high school.
Most of this would not matter much in the context of current policy decisions facing the Minnesota Legislature, but there is one additional reason it matters to me. Later that year, after Matt’s call, I got another call from Jason Phelps, a mutual high school friend of ours. Jason told me Matt was dead, dead by his own hand. I went to Matt’s funeral with our classmates. We approached that casket and I still remember what he looked like. He didn’t look like Matt at all. He had changed his appearance, as is the choice of so many freshman. Matt looked gay. Matt had struggled with so many things in his life and being gay in a strict Catholic world was only one of them. But I often think how things would have changed for Matt if he had the same hope for happiness as I did. Regardless, I think about Matt a lot. We all thought of ourselves as tough, but Matt walked as a stranger in a strange land, with a toughness that none of us could know, with a silence that cost him so much.
So in that context, in my freshman year of college where it seemed my world had suddenly turned gay, I sought to learn a little more about all those who helped me understand those things from which I had been shielded for my entire life. Tony and Juan, my freshman house mates, were my partners in extended philosophical discussions about God and the nature of the universe, about human nature and service to the people in the poor neighborhood where we lived. Sometimes the conversation turned to sexual orientation, but infrequently. When it did, they were pretty matter of fact about it. It was just a part of who they were, just as liking girls was only a part of who I was. I learned to really respect Tony’s opinions, perspectives and challenges. I also saw him hazed and ridiculed by our own housemates. It was his reaction to that which I noticed more than anything. Tony had come out as gay in a hostile environment. It takes cojones to do that. It takes energy—constant energy. And it is energy like his that is the reason we voted on the MN House floor today. We voted on this bill because people like Tony decided to take a risk on people like me.
I voted in support of marriage equality on behalf of the hundreds of gay men and women I know who want to marry the person they love and be recognized as such with the same honor as I was when I married my sweetheart, Melissa, last September. I cast my vote thinking of Matt and Tony, because they are the ones who struggled against the tide thorough which I so casually waded on my way to adulthood.
The Minnesota Senate is expected to vote on marriage equality on Monday, May 13th. Governor Dayton has signaled he will sign the bill into law, making Minnesota the 12th state in the country to recognize marriage equality.
Please contact me directly with your questions, comments and concerns. You can reach me by phone at (651) 296-4224 or by email at rep.john.lesch@house.mn. You can also follow me on Twitter at @johnlesch.
Sincerely,
John Lesch
State Representative
District 66B