Yesterday, Eva Young and I donated the late Karl Bremer's Edwatch CD of the infamous 2004 speech by then MN Senator Michele Bachmann titled "The Effect of Gay Marriage on Education" to the Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Studies at the University of Minnesota.
This is the speech in which Bachmann said:
"It’s a very sad life. It’s part of Satan, I think, to say this is gay..."
The Edwatch speech was much quoted by the national blogs and news media during Bachmann's short-lived campaign for President of the United States. We can thank Karl for obtaining this recording of Bachmann's bigotry and extremism. Here is a You Tube version of this speech:
It should be noted while listening to this warped, bigoted speech that the person who gave the essential financial boost to Michele Bachmann's campaign for Congress that made her a frontrunner was Frank Vennes. Without Frank Vennes's purloined largesse Michele Bachmann likely would not have become a national embarrassment and a stain on the history of Minnesota politics.
I do not know whether Frank Vennes shared Michele Bachmann's bigoted views of gay people. Perhaps Mr. Vennes and his cohorts donated thousands of dollars to Michele Bachmann only to obtain a letter addressed to the Pardon Attorney recommending a pardon for Mr. Vennes see Karl Bremer's three-part series on the effort to win a pardon for Frank Vennes including a timeline of donations and events relating to the Vennes request for a pardon Parts
One,
Two &
Three]. It really doesn't matter what his motives were - the facts speak for themselves.
If anything good comes from this sordid saga of dirty money for political favors is that it serves an object lesson about our broken electoral system. If the saying "Bad money drives out good" is true, there can be no worse money than money derived from criminal activity. Unless elections are publicly financed, we will likely see more unethical demagogues like Bachmann elevated to high public office by fraudsters like Vennes.
