Dean Johnson In Full Retreat
Earlier this week, an activist group, Minnesota for Marriage, released a tape of Dean Johnson telling a group of pastors that the Defense of Marriage Amendment was unnecessary because he’d talked with the former Chief Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, who promised that they wouldn’t take up the issue.
The Strib is reporting that Johnson had a teary-eyed breakdown this week.
With Republicans already launching an ad campaign against him, an emotional and at times teary-eyed Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson again apologized Friday for saying several Supreme Court justices assured him they would not overturn Minnesota law and allow same-sex marriages. “I apologize to you and all the people of this state,” Johnson told reporters gathered in his Senate office. “I made a mistake. I need a second chance today.”
But Johnson, DFL-Willmar, also offered yet another, and still milder, version of the conversation that he says occurred between him and an unnamed justice sometime late last year. Recounting what he said was a “casual” encounter with a justice, Johnson said that in response to his question about the 1997 law banning same-sex marriage, the justice “kind of just shrugged…and said, ‘Yeah, we have a law.’ That was it.” That’s at odds with two other versions of that meeting.
Johnson’s statements have changed colors more often than a chameleon on plaid. He’s been caught lying and instead of just admitting it, he’s repeatedly changed his statement.
Asked if he had ever embellished a statement, House Speaker Steve Sviggum, R-Kenyon, said, “If it means putting my spin on things, I’m sure I’ve done that on many occasions.” The whole issue, he said, “would go away if the Senate would just vote.”
The solution is simple: get the bill moving through the Senate.
In another Strib article, Pastor Brent Waldemarsen answered some questions from Patricia Lopez on what motivated him to tape the conversation. Here’s part of that interview:
Q What led you to make the tape?
A It’s really a very simple thing. It was a matter of me wanting to be able to, if I needed to, quote Sen. Johnson…accurately and in context…I wasn’t trying to set him up for something.
Sounds reasonable.
Q What made you decide to do this?
A I’m not really interested in the politics of stuff, as a rule. I’m not a political activist. It’s not something I truly enjoy. But I have a strong conviction on the state of marriage. I’ve been seeing how some states are overturning their DOMA [Defense of Marriage] laws and it alarmed me. I thought, this is something I have to get involved in.
As I’ve said elsewhere, laws can be overturned by a majority of judges who don’t mind setting social policy. State Supreme Courts have never overturned a state’s constitutional amendment.
Q What did you think of his comments?
A He wanted to pacify us so we would back off on trying to push this through. He knew what he was saying, in my opinion. He said it with some very strong conviction. It wasn’t ‘Gosh, I bumped into a justice in the rotunda.’ Nothing like that. He presented it as ‘I have this assurance.’ When he said that, something clicked. [Samuel] Alito had been going through confirmation [for U.S. Supreme Court] and they were trying to get him to say how he would rule. The commentators were all saying you can’t do that. So that made me think.
Bingo. As I read Johnson’s assurances, I was thinking that exact thing. I said so right here: “Getting assurances from judges on an issue that might well appear on their docket would be most grievous and possibly open to sanctions.”
Cross-post at LetFreedomRing