Karen Clark as Keynoter and
Awardee Highlights CPCSM's
Annual Community Meeting

State Representative Karen Clark presents the keynote address at CPCSM's Annual Community Meeting on June 22, 2004.

"That's the really revolutionary act -- to dare to believe that people can change their hearts and minds."

With those powerful words of inspiration, Karen Clark summed up the theme of her keynote presentation, entitled Full Inclusion and Equality for All GLBT Families: The Struggles That Lie Ahead, at CPCSM's 24th annual community meeting.

Karen prefaced her talk, by sharing how much she was struck by the strength of the relationships of CPCSM's members and by the the depth of CPCSM's current projects as she sat in the audience waiting to give her address. "Listening to the summary of your current projects shows me that you are a vital organization, and you give me courage and nourishment to keep on going," she told the audience.

She then began her address by pointing out how her own entrance into political life in 1980—as an openly lesbian State Legislator—coincided with the founding of CPCSM.

Highlighting other ways in which she felt connected to CPCSM and the rest of the Catholic community, Karen spoke of her Catholic background and the positive effect its teachings on social justice has had on her life. She especially recalled the positive influence of the all-women's College of St. Theresa in Winona in helping her learn how to become a strong and independent woman.

Karen's Catholic background, however, also resulted in her first experience of discrimination. While growing up on her family's sharecropper farm near the southwestern Minnesota town of Edgerton, she and her brothers were from the only Catholic family in the local public school dominated by students from anti-Catholic Dutch-Reform backgrounds. As a result, she and her siblings endured much harassment from their classmates because of their Catholic identity.

When she sought advice from her parents about the harassment, they urged her to take a peaceful, nonviolent approach. "Feel sorry for those kids because they don't know any better," they advised her. "Their parents have been giving them bad information, so it's not their fault. Be nice to them and eventually they may come around."

From that first experience of discrimination, Karen had learned a lot about being a member of a minority and a lot about how to peacefully deal with injustice -- lessons that would serve her well in her later career as a champion of the rights of the marginalized and the voiceless.

During her keynote address, Karen summarized highpoints in the 20-year history of GLBT human rights legislation in Minnesota. As the only "out" lesbian in the Minnesota legislature, she has played a major role in this history. Karen emphasized the extensive and diverse organizing necessary during those years to arrive at the great success of 1993 when GLBT persons became a protected group under the state's human rights laws.

The movement's early organizers began by first focusing on the hate crimes that GLBT persons were suffering and by encouraging Governor Perpich to form a commission in 1987 whereby such crimes could be documented throughout the state during public listening sessions.

Karen also told about how she often listened to the personal sharing at the private sessions that followed the public hearings. It was in these private sessions that most of the testimony took place. Karen recalled the painful stories of numerous GLBT persons and their family members as they described the grief they endured while either suffering discrimination or harassment themselves, or in watching their loved ones suffering such injustices. The findings of the Perpich task force eventually led to the passage in 1988 of a hate crimes bill that would protect GLBT persons and increase penalties for such crimes.

In 1992, Karen and her colleagues prevailed upon Governor Carlson to create another task force to study the discrimination that GLBT persons were experiencing in jobs, housing, and public accommodations. The results from that task force became a springboard for the lobbying efforts that occurred in 1992 and 1993. These efforts culminated in the 1993 Human Rights Amendment that added GLBT persons to the list of groups protected by the Minnesota human rights laws.

In acknowledging CPCSM's important lobbying efforts and the support for the legislation from the Minnesota Catholic Conference, Karen emphasized the coalition-building that played an essential role in getting the 1993 legislation passed. She also noted that the greatest influence came from local religious, labor union, and racial minority leaders and organizations.

Another significant element of the Minnesota GLBT movement's early success was the personal relationships that Karen formed with other legislators—especially those who were personally affected either by hateful and bigoted comments from constituents when they showed support for pro-GLBT legislation or by the sufferings of these legislators’ own GLBT friends or relatives.

Her working relationships, however, have also involved tragic stories. In particular, Karen recalled working with colleagues who were themselves parents of GLBT children. Yet either because they were too fearful or too hardened in their beliefs, these legislators were unable or unwilling to support or even acknowledge their children by casting a single positive vote on crucial GLBT human rights issues.

Karen's message about what is needed to continue the human rights movement as marriage and family issues emerge for legislative consideration, is to keep on with what has worked in the past—deep and broad-based organizing and the building of coalitions and personal relationships.

However, she warned that even harder work will be needed in the coming months. The recent attempt in the Minnesota Senate (following an overwhelming passage in the House) to place on the ballot for fall elections an anti-GLBT marriage referendum that could amend the state's constitution, was prevented by "the smallest thread." The wording of this recent bill could be used to outlaw not only GLBT marriages but also any "legal equivalent of marriage," such as civil unions.

"It's very clear that the governor's agenda and the agenda of the extreme right wing, is to get their so-called 'Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment' passed," said Karen. She also pointed out that the danger of passage is not yet over for this year given the possibility of a special legislative session. "I really urge you to contact your own legislators, especially your senators, and urge them to hold strong on this [i.e., their current position of not allowing the vote to be brought to the full Senate]." she said.

On a more positive note, Karen pointed out that some of the recently elected right-wing Republican legislators whose numbers have resulted in a "super majority" in the House, had won their elections by margins of a only a few hundred votes. It would not take that much effort, she reassured the audience, to win back those seats. If GLBT rights supporters would ask friends and families living in those districts to share their own stories or the stories of GLBT persons they care about, they could begin to turn around the votes, one at a time.

By the end of her keynote address, it had become clear that Karen's whole political life—one imbued with the hope and passion, especially for those living in her impoverished South Minneapolis district, and for the GLBT citizens of Minnesota—has been an embodiment of the inspiring words of her presentation—"dare to believe that people can change their hearts and their minds".

In light of this, it was a very fitting conclusion to her appearance at CPCSM's annual meeting that she was included among the evening's recipients of the 2004 Bishop Gumbleton's Peace and Justice Award, presented by the CPCSM Board of Directors.

The inscription on her award reads as follows: In recognition of your selfless, untiring, steadfast, and loving service in working for the full and equal participation in society of all GLBT citizens through the passage of just and fair laws; your station as an outstanding national and local role model, a beacon of hope, and a symbol of unity and pride for the whole GLBT community; and your ever faithful example in teaching us all how to be compassionate advocates for the poor, the disenfranchised, and the voiceless.

Karen Clark with her 2004 Bishop Gumbleton Peace and Justice Award.

Note: please click here to view
an exact replica of Karen's Award.