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.”