The National Organization for Marriage held yet another rally in front of an imposing, columned edifice yesterday, this time on the grounds of the Minnesota State Capitol. Their main message: “traditional marriage” advocates are a besieged minority continuing a path blazed by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, in the face of attacks by members of the LGBT community seeking to strip them of their right to free speech. Many of NOM’s supporters warmed to these words, but OutFront Minnesota’s interim Executive Director said she thinks NOM is fighting a loosing battle in a state where same-gender marriage may not even be a major election issue.

Many NOM speakers repeated well-worn arguments at Wednesday’s hour-long rally about gay sex being evil, and how ‘science proved’ that same-gender parents were not good for children. Many on both sides of the debate have heard these same arguments over and over again; what was new was a message of imminent threat to these social conservatives’ civil rights. Several speakers pointed to previous rallies on the “Summer of Marriage” bus tour as evidence that NOM, their supporters, and allies were a persecuted minority under attack from LGBT groups who sought to take away their right to vote on issues of same-gender marriage, and who wished to silence their right to freedom of speech.

NOM’s Executive Director, Brian Brown, told the crowd that despite the civil mood at the Capitol, they should be expecting LGBT activists to try to shout them down, and said that anti-NOM activists in Providence, Rhode Island, tried to storm the podium and “silence” the rally.

Despite the warm reception that these cries of “victim” received from 160 or so attendees at the NOM rally, OutFront Minnesota’s Interim Executive Director, Monica Meyer, said she doesn’t think marriage will be a big issue in the November election for governor and in the numerous, sure-to-be hotly contested elections for the state Senate and House of Representatives. NOM’s Brian Brown warned his supporters that the elections would be “the most important…for family values and life in a generation.”

“So far, [marriage] hasn’t been used as an election issue by any candidate or political group except NOM,” Meyer told TheColu.mn after the rally and OutFront’s 217-person counter-demonstration inside the Capitol rotunda.

“A majority of Minnesotans don’t support discrimination,” she said, referring to recent polls.

“Candidates know they won’t be putting their best foot forward” if they base their campaigns around attacking the possibility of same-gender marriage in Minnesota, Meyer said, pointing to the governor’s race, where three of the four major candidates support the legalization of same-gender marriages.