According to State of Minnesota records, Dr. Marcus Bachmann has provided financial support to the Minnesota Family Council’s successful lobbying campaign to get a constitutional ban on gay marriage onto the ballot in 2012. The amendment was the brainchild of his wife, Rep. Michele Bachmann, who officially announced on Monday that she was running for President of the United States.
Dr. Bachmann provided financial support to the Minnesota Family Council in its efforts to lobby Minnesota Republicans to pass the constitutional amendment. According to Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board records, he donated in 2009 and 2010. The document only provide the names of individuals and corporations who have donated to lobbying campaigns, not the amounts donated. The Minnesota Independent will be looking into other donors to the campaign in coming days.
Marcus Bachmann runs a Christian counseling clinic that has been accused of conducting “ex-gay therapy,” but confirmation on that point has never been made.
In 2006, City Pages reported that Dr. Bachmann attended a “Minnesota Pastors’ Summit” hosted by the Minnesota Family Council, a group that has compared being gay or lesbian to bestiality and pedophilia. At that meeting, Bachmann presented a session called “The Truth About the Homosexual Agenda,” which included three individuals who said they were no longer gay or lesbian.
“He was saying how homosexuality was a choice, that it was not genetics,” said Twin Cities resident Curt Prins at the time. “He was claiming there was a high predominance of sexual abuse in the GLBT community. There was no research to back any of this up.”
In spring 2010, Dr. Bachmann appeared on a conservative radio program to talk about homosexuality and his counseling clinic.
He had advice for parents whose children are gay or lesbian. “I think you clearly say what is the understanding of God’s word on homosexuality,” he said. “We have to understand that barbarians need to be educated, they need to be disciplined, and just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean we need to go down that road. That’s what’s called the sinful nature.”
He added, “And we have a responsibility as parents and authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings moving into the action steps.”
As the Minnesota Independent previously reported, Bachmann’s clinic, Bachmann and Associates, Inc., also took nearly $30,000 in state funds over the last several years, raising concerns about the separation of church and state. Bachmann’s clinic is overtly conservative Christian in its counseling.
Michele Bachmann, as a state senator in 2004, wrote and introduced a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In a video to supporters, she warned that the then-new gay marriage law in Massachusetts could result in an “activist judge” striking down Minnesota’s Defense of Marriage Act. “Without this amendment,” she said, “Minnesota could have gay marriage imposed on us in 2004.”
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