Apparently, the tea party trumps family for Michele Bachmann.
What's it like to be Helen LaFave, Michele Bachmann's gay step-sister? Not surprisingly, more than a
little bit painful.
Helen never had a conversation about her sexual orientation with Michele and knew that Michele’s evangelical Christianity was deeply felt. Still she couldn’t believe it when, about a decade ago, Michele began to use her position as a state senator in Minnesota to call out gays and lesbians as sick and evil and to push for an amendment to the Minnesota constitution that would prohibit same-sex marriage: precisely the kind of amendment that Minnesotans will vote on in a referendum on Election Day.
“It felt so divorced from having known me, from having known somebody who’s gay,” said Helen, a soft-spoken woman with a gentle air. “I was just stunned.” [...]
She told Michele as much, in a letter dated Nov. 23, 2003. She sent copies to her four siblings, her father and one of Michele’s brothers, and kept one herself. In the letter she described her “hurt and disappointment that my stepsister is leading this charge.”
“You’ve taken aim at me,” Helen wrote to Michele. Referring to Nia, she added: “You’ve taken aim at my family.”
Michele, she said, never acknowledged the letter in any way.
Ms. LaFave has generally avoided the public eye and making public comment about her relative, who she truly loves as a sister. She is speaking out now because of the "legacy" of Bachmann's homophobic speech and actions which have helped lead to the constitutional gay marriage ban on the ballot this year. LaFave, who has been with her partner Nia for 25 years, says she is now compelled “to speak out for fairness for those of us who are being judged and told our lives and relationships are somehow less."
Bachmann has refused to acknowledge publicly or personally that she is calling for her own step-sister to be treated as a second-class citizen. That she has championed discrimination against her own family.
But here's the good news: We have two ways to beat Bachmann in November. One is by kicking her out of office. There's another way, too. And that's by defeating her discriminatory, homophobic, bigoted agenda.
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