NOM: Mean Ol' Al Franken Bullied Tom Minnery!

Advocates and activists for LGBT equality crowed with delight when, during the DOMA congressional hearings, Sen. Al Franken called out Focus on the Family's Tom Minnery for submitting an inaccurate and misleading representation of scientific research.  Essentially, Minnery tried to say that a certain study proved children did better in heterosexual families, which was a big load of bullcrap.  Just because it's awesome, watch the video again:




Now, the National Organization for Marriage is promoting a piece written by Carrie Daklin of Minnesota Public Radio in which she whines that Al Franken should have avoided embarrassing Tom Minnery and that Franken's criticisms constituted an "ambush."

"I [would] hope that if I did have to testify before the Senate, whoever was questioning me would be kind, would recognize that this was his sandbox, not mine, and that, as a representative of our country, he would not embarrass me for his own purposes.

"Sadly, when Tom Minnery testified, that was not the kind of treatment he received from Al Franken.

"Sen. Franken [...] chastised Minnery's assumption of the definition of nuclear families, and stated, essentially, that if Minnery had so misinterpreted the information in the HHS report, then all of his testimony was subject to question.

"A fine performance, Sen. Franken, but here's the rub: In case you missed it in those DOMA hearings, the federal government doesn't recognize same-sex marriage. So I would think it might have been reasonable for Minnery to assume that a federal report had followed federal law.

"... Humiliation and respect are mutually exclusive. I am afraid that in his zest for the issue at hand, Sen. Franken, wittingly or not, fostered humiliation instead of respect."

In her analysis, Daklin is essentially claiming that it's not Minnery's fault that he assumed the federally funded scientific study was in contrast with the federal government's political position, a complaint that illustrates perfectly the fatal flaw within the anti-gay movement.  Science is not going to find in favor of the politically expedient, unfortunately, and Minnery's misrepresentation of the facts showed sloppy work and a disrespect for the study that he was attempting to quote.  

Really?  Minnery humiliated himself, and any attempt to foist this off on Franken is amateur politicking at best.  Minnery received the respect that his testimony deserved which, unfortunately for him, was a round of laughter and jeering.