Oust the Anti-Gay in SD 48!

Minnesota Senate District 48 contains the suburban and exurban communities of Elk River, Oak Grave, East Bethel, Ramsey, and Anoka (among many others). Currently representing the district is Republican Michael Jungbauer. He is being challenged by DFL candidate Mike Starr, an Air Force veteran and retired Army National Guard veteran. He has 25 years of military experience. Jungbauer, on the other hand, has tons of experience in anti-gayness and religious zealotry.

In 2003, Jungbauer decided to draft a bill stripping the Minnesota's Human Right Act of any reference to sexual orientation or gender identity (link to bill text and status).

"The bill, authored by Republican state Senator Michael Jungbauer, aimed to exclude gays from the Minnesota Human Rights Act in order to "keep homosexual practices from being taught in the schools," reports Conrad deFiebre of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Jungbauer took up the cause when approached by what he referred to as "somewhat fanatical" mothers who worried that their children were "a captive audience to homosexual propaganda," as Republican Senator Warren Lidner put it. But excluding gays from the Human Rights Act, the Minnesota Senate ruled, would do nothing for schoolchildren and serve to justify discrimination against gays seeking employment or housing."

He was also subject to an ethics investigation when trying to get money for the GOP under the guise of 'defending marriage':

"The complaint alleges that Jungbauer, a first-term lawmaker, knowingly used Senate e-mail as a means of soliciting financial and political support for Senate Republican candidates and registered political committee...In the complaint, an e-mail Jungbauer sent out to “Defense of Marriage Supporters” is cited in which he notifies supporters of an April 7 press conference at the Capitol. In an attached media advisory, the purpose of the press conference is given as to announce the formation of a program to encourage Minnesota citizens to pledge their financial support to defeating DFL senators if the DFL-controlled Senate continues to block a same-sex constitutional amendment."

The ethics committee found him guilty of the violation and he wrote an apology.

Two years ago, Nick Coleman wrote an article about the attack on the separation of church and state. Jungbauer was responsible for a sizeable chunk of the article. His scariest quote: "I do a ton of original research on the Constitution," says Jungbauer, a member of Constance Evangelical Free Church in Andover. "The founding fathers thought the judicial branch would be controlled by believers in Christ. The U.S. was founded on New Testament religion. We are in the Grace Era." Sounds a lot like Jungbauer is part of the Rise of Christian Nationalism.

Jungbauer seems to be bad news for Minnesota. Voters in the district should think long and hard about Jungbauer. The rest of Coleman's article is in the extended entry.

Via Google cache for DailyKos copy of Strib article. Nobody keeps anything anymore apparently.

"My caller said Sen. Michael Jungbauer, R-East Bethel, had written him a letter stating that separation of church and state is "a false belief" and that "It is legal for a state to establish and promote a religion."

Yikes. No one who said such a thing could ever have been elected to the Legislature from my neighborhood. But in a week's time, I had heard two state officeholders reject one of the concepts I thought that all of us held dear.

Ain't no "all of us" anymore.

Jungbauer is a graduate of Moody Bible Institute and a former mayor of East Bethel who earns his living designing septic systems. Like Kiffmeyer, he argues that the words "separation of church and state," although established in law through many court rulings, do not appear in the Constitution.

Kiffmeyer has a stump speech rejecting the common understanding of what is meant by separation of church and state. But Jungbauer and a cadre of other lawmakers -- several dozen legislators meet for prayer and Bible study every Wednesday -- take it further:

They dismiss the idea out of hand.

Jungbauer blames separation of church and state on activist judges in a Supreme Court case called Everson vs . Board of Education from 1947 -- years before the nuns got hold of me.

"I do a ton of original research on the Constitution," says Jungbauer, a member of Constance Evangelical Free Church in Andover. "The founding fathers thought the judicial branch would be controlled by believers in Christ. The U.S. was founded on New Testament religion. We are in the Grace Era."