Today’s post comes from the Honorable Loomis Beechly, representing Minnesota’s 9th District – all the water surface area in the state.
Greetings, Constituents!
I’m sending this special message so I can go on the record as being in favor of it all along before Governor Dayton signs the same sex marriage bill into law later today.
Many have accused me of being evasive or downright wishy-washy on the marriage rights issue, claiming I have split words while trying to stay acceptable to people on both sides of the debate at a time when decisiveness and leadership were sorely needed.
I don’t know what those people are talking about.
I, for one, have always striven for transparency on this question – and I believe I have been as clear as the water on beautiful Lake Opaque when it comes to same-sex marriage.
Here’s a section from my formal position paper on the issue, released almost exactly one year ago:
Most of the living creatures in my district are, as you know, fish. Walleye don’t get married, and don’t seem to want to get married. Frankly, I don’t think they even know who the fathers or mothers are of all the fish they produce – it’s really wanton and free under the lake surface with all the things they do. Fish sexual identity is just so variable, I don’t think any one set of rules can apply down there. And by “down there” I mean underwater. AND I also mean “down there.”
So I am going to declare myself to be predominantly aquatic on issues of affectional relationships.
Some will say that identifies me as a free thinker. Others will say I am endorsing natural law. But one thing I know – there are fish in the Bible, lots of them. Mostly they’re just being pulled out of the water and eaten by disciples and such, but I assure you that what they’re doing under the surface today they were also doing back then, so my position is kind of scriptural, if you need it to have that sort of connection.
Many of my political opponents called that a “fishy” position, or suggested that I was “all wet,” which simply proves that they are lazy critics. Anyone who declares himself aquatic on the sexuality question is fishy by definition.
And “all wet”? What could be better? My district is nothing but lakes, rivers and swamps. So I won’t run from it. I can’t! Especially those wetlands in springtime. When your boots start to take on mud and water, there’s no question – you’re not going anywhere.
The mind of the voting public is changing, and any politician who refuses to respond to that will soon be left lying on the dock, gasping and wheezing and flopping around helplessly, waiting to be picked up by a dog or kicked into the weeds or taken home and thrown in a tank by some kid who doesn’t care anything about fish and will cry for about 10 seconds when the inevitable belly-up situation develops.
No thanks.
I’m pretty sure I was in favor of this all along, so today comes as a moment of vindication. We win?
Sincerely,
Your Congressman and fishing buddy,Loomis Beechly
How do you handle a slippery fish?
Trail Baboon 
Good morning. I was taught to be very careful when handling a bullhead. They have a sharp spine and getting stuck with that spine can be very painful. To hold a bullhead, I was told to grip it by lodging my fingers in it’s gills. I suppose that griping technic would work with other fish. Also, I think some pliers would work well for holding a slippery fish. Try to grab them when they are not flopping around too much.
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hey jim lets not get too personal here.
i cant believe senator beechley thinks about whats going on down there and jim you too. put the pliers away and dont talk about it flopping around.
when i handle my slippery fish i try to keep it to my self.
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I hope you avoid the sharp spines on the bullheads, tim.
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i am so proud of minnesota and the freedom to marry passage that i will even applaud senator beechley and his support of the change. i am wondering how the opposition would feel if the times ever changed enough that the glbt lifestyle became common enough that the majority was able to make the claim that hetrosexual behavior was deviant and told those who chose to engage in it that they were not ok. i can only think they would wonder where the heck that came from. dictated seems absurd. the fact that it has gone on for so long is incredible. we will look back on the rednecks who bash gays as the same type of shallow ignorant bigots as the racial bigots of the 60’s. they are still out there but they talk quietly among themselves and feel the way society looks down on their prejudice.
minnesota. home of 10,000 places for us all to enjoy. all of us
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Mee Too
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A friend just posted an image on Facebook that read, “Minnesota: Where the women are strong, the men are good looking and the marriages are equal.” 🙂
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🙂
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🙂 🙂
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That’s great.
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🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
I believe I may need to do my part to send that viral.
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Ditto.
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I don’t know, tim, if you listened to the floor debate prior to yesterday’s vote. While I think some of those senators were incredibly disingenuous, I believe some of them really struggled with this whole issue. I have a couple of very dear friends who have deeply held religious beliefs and who agonize over what they see as a redefinition of a sacred institution, so I’m not inclined to label anyone who opposed this bill “a shallow ignorant bigot.” For me, this was a no-brainer, possibly because I don’t have a deeply held religious beliefs that collide with accepting same sex couples, and, having been divorced, and now married 34 years, I’m not apt to have anything but a very realistic view of marriage. To me this whole issue is a civil rights issue, and there is no doubt in my mind, that this is the right thing to do, finally. I plan on being at the Capitol for the signing of this bill, and joining the throngs of people in celebration afterwards, but I know that for a lot of people, this is no cause for celebration. We’ll just have to prove them wrong in the long
run.
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Final decision aside, all I could think as I listened, sporadically, was no wonder things take forever to happen in the government if we have to listen to everyone’s story and opinion. Of course everyone’s opinion is valuable, I respect that. But I had made up my decision on how to vote long ago so after some brief discussion I’m ready to vote. And yet they discuss it for hours– if not days!
No wonder when you see photos of the legislature they’re taking naps and using their phones or computers. So who’s really listening?
I couldn’t do it. I will never ask for your vote. (Unless you live in my township).
I only handle frozen fish and slippery slopes.
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The extended personal debate on this issue was the exception, Ben. They generally create legislation in committee and floor debate is usually quick and limited to amendments (helpful and poisonous). This issue created a need in legislators to declare why they were voting as they did, for most of them go home now to face a public deeply divided on this issue.
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I think you’re tight about that Steve.
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Geez, right about that!
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Haven’t been tight in quite a while, PJ!
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A lot of the arguments against marriage equality included some sort of denial of any sort of bigotry in their motives along with a profession of sincere and deeply held religious beliefs. As if sincere and deeply held beliefs can’t be bigoted as well…
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OT – How’s Robin doing? Will she need surgery?
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At the doctor’s advice, we are waiting a couple of weeks before making that determination. A lot depends on whether her range of motion is going to be significantly compromised. My guess at this point is that it’s likely.
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I believe that many Nazis and KKK people had/have sincere and deeply held religious beliefs.
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Actually, the Nazi’s were pretty anti-religion, and made a point of holding Nazi youth meetings at the same time that was traditionally for church youth activities, so as to weaken the ties between youth and the church. Dietrich Bonhoffer was a German Lutheran pastor and vehemently anti-Nazi. He is an inspiration to us all. I know nothing of the religious affiliations of the KKK.
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I had read somewhere that in at least one nazi concentration camp, there was a sign that read “you are being killed in the name of Jesus Christ.”
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I’m not going to hold my breath for similar legislative action here in ND. Maybe in a couple of decades or so. I hope I am wrong.
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Rise and Shine Baboons!
Dale, you are gunning for controversy. Yesterday was religion of a sort. Today is the combination of sex and politics!
I usually handle slippery fish poorly. I drop them, flop them and then let go with a scream of frustration.
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What I think we should learn about dealing with slippery fish has to do with all the work done by gay activists to gain the support needed to pass the law on same sex marriage. Without the work of those activists I think the votes wouldn’t have been there including some from the Democrats. It is way past time for activists to come alive in support of some other important issues such as climate change.
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another thought on the slippery fish:
the activists have always been there, steadily working away. the proposed Constitutional ammendments were a rude awakening of a whole lot of just plain folks and they were shocked into action.
Moral of the story: if you’re going to go fishing for slippery fish, you had best be sure you have the net to land them, or you just might end up stuck in the hand with a bullhead barb.
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There can be no doubt that without the push for the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages, this bill would never have passed. On the other hand, forces opposed to gay marriages could tell that the tides of history were running against them, so they took a desperate chance to freeze the process with legislation that, if passed, would have set back to push for same-sex marriage for years or even decades.
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indeed. We are living in very interesting times.
Ken Burns made a real point in his documentary on Prohibition that changes to the Constitution, with that one failed exception, have always been about expanding rights, not restricting them.
I truly believe that this basic idea, that rights should not be restricted, is what turned the vote.
Reminds me of the sort of civics I was taught in school.
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Some rights are being expanded while others are being taken away. For example, under Obama the government has put at least a half dozen people in jail who blew the whistle on the government and he is the first President to make extensive use of the courts to do this.
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When it comes to fish, I let someone else handle it. Last couple of summers, we have gone up to Gull Lake for a long weekend over Memorial Day. Daughter likes fishing off the docks, but has informed me that she will only do this if her aunt can be there to take anything off the hook that she catches as I am not allowed to deal with the fish (only admire them before they get tossed back into the lake)…I’m okay with that.
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I’ve been fishing since I was four, and I’ve had a lot of contact with slippery fish. But the words “handling slippery fish” bring to mind a wilderness canoe trip I took with my father and nephew David (my sister’s first kid).
It was a pleasant trip although fishing wasn’t good. On our last day, David hooked a huge northern pike. My father had brought along a trout-sized net that wouldn’t fit over the fish’s nose. Knowing how thrilling this moment was for David, I decided to make a sacrifice. I landed the fish by putting one hand down its mouth and locking fingers with a hand under its gill plate. The mouth of a 20-pound northern is filled with sharp teeth like razor blades, and I got slashed to pieces getting the fish in. I photographed David with his fish with bleeding hands, then we released the giant northern. The photo became the cover shot for the June issue of my magazine..
Half an hour later, my dad hooked another northern pike that was the twin of the one David landed. “This is the biggest fish of my life,” my father said quietly. When it came along the boat I rolled up my sleeves because this time I knew what needed to be done to bring that lunker in the canoe..In two days we were back home where we could bandage my slashed up hands and wrists.
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Above and beyond Steve. You da Man!
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Ouch!
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Yeah, ouch! But they were magnificent fish that meant SO much to the folks who hooked them.
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Remind me not to go fishing with you, Steve.
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You’re pretty safe, BiR. The vicious teeth of pike were a good reason for me to switch to trout. In 30 years of trout fishing I never suffered cut hands and wrists.
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Morning all. Wonderful day to be a Minnesotan. The last time I remember being proud was on a MS bike trek back in the 80s; I passed someone wearing a t-shirt with an outline of our State w/ a picture of Ronald Reagan superimposed over it. There was a red circle/slash (like a Do Not Enter sign) over the whole thing and the caption read “Don’t Blame Me, I Live in Minnesota”.
On the literal front I am a city girl who became a vegetarian fairly early in life … I have never handled a live fish of any kind. The fish that currently resides with us is only handled with the little fish net.
On the non-literal front I like to think of myself as a person who doesn’t wishy-washy around too much. At election time (and sometimes between elections), there are always more yard signs in front of my house than any other on the block.
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Fishing in Rock County was pretty challenging since we had no lakes. Dad would take me to one of the gravel pits south of town that had filled with water, and we would catch sunfish. He always took the fish off the hook. The slippery fish I encounter these days are best dealt with by Probation and Parole.
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I’ve never really been good at catching actual fish, so am seldom confronted with this problem.
Philosophically, I’m going to lay claim to some fairly recently acquired (and a long and painful process it has been getting here) wisdom on this. I’ve gotten to a place where I realize once the fish is landed, as long as you have it far enough from the water, you don’t have to handle it right away, you can let it wear itself out with a lot of thrashing around (preferably in some sand), after which you can pretty much just pick it up and do as you like with it.
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As as child, I used to go fishing with my dad a lot. The rule was that if I wanted to fish, I needed to bait the hook myself, and I also needed to reel in and take any fish I caught off the hook, he’d clean them. If we had caught a lot, it was also my job going door to door asking neighbors if they wanted a free, freshly caught fish; I hated that part. Later on in college, wasband and I would go fishing with our neighbors, Frisch and Corinne, i.e. Frisch and I would fish, and wasband and Corinne would talk. Corinne wanted to fish, but she didn’t want to handle the bait or the fish, and neither Frisch nor I were willing to do it for her, so spent most of her time whining about that.
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Handle… FISH?
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Not only would daught respond the same way as you just did, but she would also add “Eat…FISH?”
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we have a small quandry on this at our house.
I come from fishing folk, so in the summer, that is where the family male-bonding takes place. S&h cannot see how even catch and release can be in any way fun for the fish. I’m thinking maybe clipping the barb off the hook and standing there with an unbaited line would be a good alternative, but would it be unethical?
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Not sure it would be unethical. However I do have trouble envisioning s&h fishing — how would he hold his book?
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🙂
Out in nature is one place he can do without a book. Before he could read, the one place you could count on him to sit still was the back yard, sitting very still so the birds would land nearby.
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I fished for several decades without barbs, mig. You clamp a little pliers on the hook point to flatten the barb. Releasing fish unharmed becomes easy with flattened barbs. You are, however, still subjecting the fish to some panic as it gets reeled in, so ethical considerations don’t entirely disappear. I think most fish forget being caught within a minute or two of being released, but who knows?
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You never know, Steve. There might be a whole fishy psychiatric industry to deal with the trauma.
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One of my favorites on Facebook after yesterday’s vote was our Lisa’s comment:
“I can’t WAIT for this wonderful decision to have NO effect on anyone else’s marriage.
lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove IS lovelovelovelovelovelovelovelove”
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somebody mentioned this yesterday, but what else could be more appropriate?
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And from another local group:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hku4JALnZmE
(P.S. was at the signing this afternoon – it was awesome!)
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One of the folks I met on the capitol steps yesterday told me that if we allowed same sex couples to marry that animals would be next-best not let him talk to Congressman Beechley or he will have even more to fret about.
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I know I have friends and acquaintances who were opposed to the bill – and mostly after a lot of thought about their faith and how they interpret the teachings of the (Christian) bible. They, by and large, understand that theirs is not the only understanding of these teachings (clearly my interpretations and understandings fall into a more socially liberal understanding). Not a one, thank the heavens, thinks this will lead to marriage to animals. It is a slippery slope to think that all opponents to the bill are that off-the-wall crazy.
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Or mean spirited, or bigots. And the reverse is true too, that all people who are for the bill are amoral perverts. Had coffee this afternoon with a friend who opposed the bill and who knows I supported it. Her discomfort was palpable when I told her I was headed to the Capitol to witness the signing of the bill. Our friendship will endure, I’m sure of it, because we both know the other is sincere in her beliefs, but we’ll probably never agree on this issue.
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I’m perfectly willing to let people entertain any religious beliefs they like, no matter how preposterous and insubstantial, as long as they recognize that their beliefs apply only to themselves. Using one’s religious prejudices to determine another person’s fitness for fair and equal access to basic rights is nothing less than bigotry. Your friend may be sincere and not generally mean spirited, but she is a bigot.
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Yes. I have to think that people who have deeply held religious beliefs still need to recognize that society doesn’t have to construct laws that please them. Our legal system has to serve everyone, not just a narrow segment of so-called Christians.
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