Doug Benson has been working hard to get same-sex marriage passed in Minnesota so that he can marry his partner of more than 20 years. When he showed up at the Blue State Bash on Saturday night with a banner asking House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher if she would push for a hearing on same-sex marriage, he was told he was not welcome.

The Blue State Bash is a party for DFLers held each year by the local Air America affiliate AM 950. The party includes a lot of big names in politics, including Kelliher, who besides being the Speaker is also running for governor. She also represents a district with the highest number of LGBT people in the state: Uptown north of Lake Street, Lake Calhoun, Loring Park and Lake of the Isles.

Benson describes the evening on his blog:

Last night I decided to attend the liberal radio AM950 event, the “Blue State Bash” along with my husband and our friend Matt. We brought and quietly displayed a banner that simply urged MN Speaker of the House, Margaret Anderson-Kelliher to move on a marriage equality hearing for February 12. Before long, officials at the well-publicised event, co-sponsored by Kelliher and several other DFL gubernatorial candidates, threw us out of the building into the cold rain. We continued to hold our sign that got rave approval from passersby, until we got too cold to continue. The only public official that came to encourage us was Congressman, Keith Ellison. We asked him to bring our message to the Speaker of the House. He said that he would.

Benson is a citizen who worked to get the Marriage and Family Protection Act introduced in the Minnesota Legislature. That bill would make same-sex marriage legal. I asked Benson about the banner:

The banner wasn’t my best work. It was a compromise with more moderate voices. It read, “Margaret! Move Marriage Equality Hearing, Feb. 12.”. I don’t know if Margaret saw it or not. We only got to display it for maybe 5 minutes before we were told security people were on their way to escort us out. They told us “this is a private party.” As we were being escorted out, Duane and I held the banner behind us so it would face the party as we were walking away. Then a voice came over the escorts’ radios ordering them to fold up the banner. We were already at the stairs so I just folded it. I didn’t want them to take it away. As we were walking down the stairs the escort told us how lucky we were to “live in America where we have freedom of speech.” They wouldn’t let us stand on the public sidewalk outside the building that was covered, even though there were people there demonstrating for candidates, we had to go across the street in the rain. I think there was bias involved.

Kelliher has not spoken publicly about the bill.