Minnesota's gay community has
apologized to state Senator Amy Koch for the ruination of her
marriage.
Koch resigned from her post as Senate
majority leader last week over allegations that she was involved in
an “inappropriate relationship.”
Koch announced she was stepping down
from her leadership position and would not seek re-election in 2012
after four fellow Republicans – David Hann, Geoff Michel, Chris
Gerlach and Claire Roblingg – confronted her with rumors of an
“inappropriate relationship” between herself and an unnamed male
Senate staffer.
Koch, who along with her husband
Christopher are raising one child, said she was resigning because she
wanted to spend more time her family.
“I made errors in judgment, for which
I am deeply sorry, by engaging in a relationship with a Senate
staffer,” Koch wrote in a statement.
Earlier this year, Koch voted in favor
of advancing a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage
in the state. Voters will decide on the measure in November.
In an open letter to Koch, John
Medeiros, a gay man from Minneapolis, apologized on behalf of the
“all gay and lesbian Minnesotans” for the effect their gay
marriage talk had on her marriage.
“On behalf of all gays and lesbians
living in Minnesota, I would like to wholeheartedly apologize 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.”
“We apologize that our selfish
requests to marry those we love has cheapened and degraded
traditional marriage so much that we caused you to stray from your
own holy union for something more cheap and tawdry. And we are
doubly remorseful in knowing that many will see this as a form of
sexual harassment of a subordinate.”
“It is now clear to us that 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.'”
Forgive us. As you know, we are not
church-going people, so we are unable to fully appreciate that 'gay
marriage' is incompatible with Christian values, despite the fact
that those values carry a biblical tradition of adultery such as
yours. We applaud you for keeping that tradition going.
“And finally, shame on us for
thinking that marriage is a private affair, and that our marriage
would have little impact on anyone's family. We now see that
marriage is more than that. It is an agreement with society. We
should listen to the Minnesota Family Council when it tells us that
marriage is about being public, which explains why marriages are
public ceremonies. Never did we realize that it is exactly because
of this societal agreement that the entire world is looking at you in
shame and disappointment instead of minding its own business.”
“From the bottom of our hearts, we
ask that you please accept our apology.”