From Minnesota Independent News:

State Sen. Paul Koering, R-Fort Ripley, told KLKS on Friday that he will not vote for the Marriage and Family Protection Act, a bill that would make Minnesota’s marriage laws gender-neutral, allowing same-sex couples many of the rights currently denied by Minnesota statute. Koering, who is gay and a Republican, said he would vote against it because the state faces bigger problems.

Koering came out in 2005 after voting against a constitutional amendment to ban civil unions and same-sex marriage pushed by then-State Sen. Michele Bachmann. He is one of very few openly gay elected Republicans in the United States and was re-elected by his conservative Brainerd-area constituents in 2006, despite a hard push by religious right activists to defeat him for his votes on gay rights.

When he came out in 2005, he was cautious about pushing hard for same-sex marriage, a position he still appears to hold.

“I think some of the gay activists will be upset with me for this, but sometimes I think an agenda is pushed so far and so fast that people have no alternative but to push back,” Koering told Raw Story at the time. “And I think that sometimes you have to move slowly.”

My problem isn’t so much that he doesn’t support civil marriage equality (it’s weird, sure, but not all gay people are unified in favor of marriage rights), but his reason for not supporting it.

From Andrew Sullivan over at the Dish:

A gay state senator in Minnesota won’t support a bill providing gay couples with many of the same rights that straight couples have. I presume he doesn’t have a husband. His reason? The state has “bigger problems” right now. And you can’t walk and chew gay at the same time?