Minnesota Family Council sought LGBT criminalization before settling for banning gay marriage

The Minnesota Family Council (MFC) may have spent the last eight years pushing for the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage that Minnesotans will vote on in November, but since its founding, the group has fought to uphold antiquated laws against homosexuality and sodomy that were often used against LGBT people.           

                                                                                               
Formed as Coalition of Concerned Christians
The Minnesota Family Council got its start in 1982 as a group of conservative Christians concerned that laws criminalizing gays and lesbians would be overturned.
“I believe we need to be true to our roots and let who we are grow out of that. The Berean League, as we were known, was founded locally by four people in 1982 as a ‘Coalition of Concerned Christians,’ former Chief Operating Officer of the Minnesota Family Council, Mike Christenson, told that organization’s newspaper, the Pro-Family News in 2001. ”This was in response to the very narrow defeat at the legislature of an attempt to repeal the Minnesota sodomy law.”
The effort to repeal the criminalization of homosexuality was supported by the Minnesota Council of Churches in 1982 . Amidst the perceived liberalism of mainstream Christianity in Minnesota, the Coalition of Concerned Christians was formed, which then blossomed into the Berean League.
Wendell and Roberta Brown were among the early founders and they joined the Rev. Morris Vaagenes of North Heights Lutheran Church in Roseville and former legislator Wayne Oloft to found the League. The foursome set out to block the planned repeal of sodomy laws and were successful; the repeal was narrowly defeated in the Minnesota Legislature in 1983.
Berean League’s literature painted gay people as diseased
The Berean League set up shop in St. Paul, where it published Roger J. Magnuson’s “Are Gay Rights Right?” a work that has been a staple of religious right groups for decades and has been discredited by civil rights groups.
The book, first published in 1985 and revamped in 1990 with a “special AIDs supplement,” contains chapters such as “What do homosexuals do?,” “Where do homosexuals do it?,” and “With whom does the homosexual do it?” The book collected the most extreme examples of sexual activity from pornography, police reports and research articles from before psychological organizations had rejected homosexuality as a mental illness, to paint gay men as diseased and psychologically deviant.
The book took advantage of the HIV epidemic in gay men to spur fears that “innocent” Americans may become infected.
Magnuson and his book played key roles in the 1992 Colorado ballot initiative that barred laws preventing discrimination against LGBT people. That initiative passed by the voters but was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1996.
In 1990, Dr. Ralph Blair of Evangelicals Concerned, reviewed Magnuson’s book, which argued that gay people weren’t discriminated against. Blair knocked down “outrageous statements” by Magnuson, such as that “one-fifth of all homosexuals admitted to having sexual contact, or at least masturbating, with animals.”
Blair condemned the false information in Magnuson’s book: ” These statements may remind one of segregationists’ warnings against racial “mongrelization,” appeals to Bible verses to support slavery, and papal decrees against sex with Jews and Protestants. How can a Christian write such a book? How can Christians buy into such a book?”

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