The battle over the anti-gay marriage amendment in Minnesota is part of a larger debate in which one side views being gay as intrinsically bad and has been working for years to repeal the gains the LGBT community has made in society.

Many Minnesotans who plan to vote “yes” on an anti-gay marriage amendment won’t be doing so because they don’t like gay people, but the groups sponsoring this amendment are very much opposed to homosexuality. The marriage amendment is just one step in a long line of attempts to eradicate homosexuality. They want gays to repent and renounce their gayness, and oppose any legal recognition that being gay is okay.

Over the last 8 years, I’ve done extensive reporting on the anti-gay marriage amendment and its supporters. I won’t presume to tell anyone how to vote, but television ads about “protecting marriage” do a disservice to what this movement’s actual goals are.

As I noted in “Before banning gay marriage, criminalizing homosexuality was Family Council’s cause celebre,” the roots of the anti-gay marriage amendment began to grow from a movement that was built to maintain laws that said being gay was a crime.

The Minnesota Family Council founded Minnesota for Marriage, the coalition pushing the amendment, in 2004 after a stinging defeat in the battle to criminalize gays and lesbians. The Minnesota Supreme Court struck down the state’s sodomy law in 2001 effectively ending a law that served to punish the LGBT community.

“I believe we need to be true to our roots and let who we are grow out of that. The Berean League, as we were known, was founded locally by four people in 1982 as a ‘Coalition of Concerned Christians,’ former Chief Operating Officer of the Minnesota Family Council, Mike Christenson, told that organization’s newspaper, the Pro-Family News in 2001. ”This was in response to the very narrow defeat at the legislature of an attempt to repeal the Minnesota sodomy law.”

Attempts to repeal Minnesota’s sodomy law through the legislative means was attempted in 1999. The Minnesota Family Council was fierce in its opposition. “We think the sodomy and fornication laws should stay in statute, and there are legitimate reasons why,” the groups president, Tom Prichard, told the Star Tribune at the time. “All kinds of consensual behavior—drugs, prostitution, incest—has sanctions against it because of negative social consequences.”

Until early 2011, the Minnesota Family Council website contained false and defaming information about the LGBT community. After I wrote, “Family Council asks for ‘respectful debate,’ says gays are pedophiles who engage in bestiality”, the group took that section of their website down.

One such passage read, “Accepting homosexuals as ‘normal’ victimizes homosexuals themselves. If a person has a disorder, it is far worse to tell him that he is fine (and encourage him to blame society for problems associated with his disorder) than to point out his problem and offer a means of help.”

While the Minnesota Family Council opposes same-sex marriage, not an uncommon stance, the group also opposes domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples, hospital visitation for same-sex couples, anti-bullying policies that mention LGBT students, the right for gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, and the group vocally opposed Minnesota’s Human Rights Act which makes it illegal to fire somebody just because they are gay or lesbian.

The even led a push to have that law repealed.

This anti-gay marriage amendment is part of a larger effort to stop full civil equality for LGBT people.

“By participating in this public debate about the future of marriage, I would never, ever want to encourage any discrimination toward people with same-sex attractions,” Archbishop John Nienstedt said in an interview with the National Catholic Register in March. And he may well feel that way. I can’t know the operation of someone else’s mind. But his actions tell a much different story.

The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis runs Courage, a program that seeks to convince all gay and lesbian Catholics — or as Nienstedt repeatedly calls them: those who are same-sex attracted — to remain celibate and to never have a loving, committed relationship with someone of the same-sex.

And the Minnesota Catholic Conference, the public policy wing of the Catholic Church, has posted numerous articles from “ex-gays” in support of the anti-gay marriage amendment.

In “Ex-gay movement deeply tied to marriage amendment push,” I traced the movement of ex-gay proponents within the push to ban same-sex marriage in the state’s constitution. The Catholic Church figured prominently.

Nienstedt also opposes any recognition of same-sex couples.

In an interview with the Star Tribune, Nienstedt was asked about civil unions.

“The church teaches that civil unions are not equivalent or analogous to marriage between a man and a woman, and are harmful both to the person and to society,” he said. “Any legal approval of “civil unions” contributes to the erosion of the authentic meaning of marriage, as basic human rights are violated by any and all attempts to redefine it.”

The Church is the second leg in the Minnesota for Marriage coalition. The third is the National Organization for Marriage.

NOM has decried domestic partnerships and civil unions as “trojan horses” sure to lead to same-sex marriage.

But, NOM’s biggest impact has been to stop rights for same-sex couples anywhere they might appear. They promoted the idea that equality for gays and lesbians will end with pastors in jail, and (falsely) discredited the idea that gays and lesbians can make good parents. They’ve also advanced the idea that those in favor of LGBT equality are intolerant, anti-religious and, in some cases, dangerous.

NOM also uses the language of the Catholic Church in describing gays and lesbians. Instead, we are labeled as “same-sex attracted.”

The three legs of Minnesota for Marriage stand for positions that are even more ominous for gay rights than just same-sex marriage. The marriage amendment in Minnesota is just one tactic in a broader movement that views gays and lesbians as intrinsically bad. And the solution, according to the groups backing the amendment, is to encourage them to not be gay anymore.

A vote for the anti-gay marriage amendment should be viewed as a vote for that agenda. This is not about protecting marriage; it is about putting gays and lesbians back in the closet.