Minnesota Family Council President and CEO Jeff Evans joined Liz Collin to talk about its mission and what’s ahead in the final days of the state’s legislative session.
“Our task is to defend life, family, marriage, and religious liberty in the public square. We’re nonpartisan advocates of the evangelical church and believers to keep them informed and engaged in all that’s going on in each state,” Evans explained.
“We work with nonpartisan groups and non-religious groups as well … and we work outside the Christian faith. We actually defended some Somali Muslims in St. Louis Park through True North Legal a year ago. So we’re willing to partner and work together with just about anybody, but our identity is deeply evangelical and Christian,” he added.
Boys in girls’ sports
Minnesota’s legislative session is scheduled to end on Monday, May 19. Legislation to ban boys from competing in girls’ sports came up short in the House last month. Attorney General Keith Ellison is now suing President Donald Trump’s administration over the issue.
Evans summed up the current status: “As far as the session goes right now, we believe that the girls’ sports issue is most likely not going to come back up again. We advanced a house file … which was trying to protect K-12 school athletics for female athletes here in Minnesota … we were able to keep some of the radical agenda from being passed.”
He also posed a key question: “So, I think we’re in a decent position to protect women’s sports, but long-term, whether or not we’re able to protect against the ideology that’s out there is really going to depend upon people who are watching here today. Are you willing to be involved, informed, engaged?”
Evans explained how all of this “really depends on Minnesotans stepping up to the plate. We’re here for them. We’re going to encourage them. Right now we’re in a pretty good position, but we will continue to fight this battle diligently and we need people to support it.”
So-called Equal Rights Amendment
Evans also spoke on the ERA, the so-called Equal Rights Amendment. This year’s proposal included a constitutional protection for “gender identity or gender expression.”
“We don’t believe that there’s a way forward, but there are always surprises in May, so we stand ready to do whatever we need to to protect that. It goes back to, are Minnesotans aware? A lot of people can’t believe that we’re even talking about these things, that this is a live issue here in the state and there are a lot of people who are legitimately confused,” Evans said.
“This is really the debate, whether it’s in women’s sports or the ERA,” he continued. “Are we willing to exchange the definition that we’ve used up until now, the definition of what it is to be a woman or to be a girl and swap it out for something else? And so we don’t want to erase women and girls from our state statutes. We want to protect them.”
Pending private school cuts
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is proposing millions of dollars in cuts to state support for nonpublic school students over the next two years. It would slash state aid that typically covers transportation, textbooks, school nurses, and guidance counselors at nonpublic schools.
Minnesota Family Council is working with the Minnesota Catholic Conference and other organizations to push back. A rally is scheduled for Wednesday, May 7 at 1:30 p.m. in the Capitol Rotunda.
“We just want to help parents make the wisest choices that they need to make for their kids and their education. And one of the big concerns that we have is that this proposed cut is really going to hurt those who are most vulnerable in our society,” Evans said.
“The rug is going to be pulled out from them,” he continued. “And there’s actually bipartisan opposition to what the governor’s doing. Don’t think of this as a monolithic Republican, Democrat, conservative, progressive. There are people on both sides of the aisle who think this is a bad idea.”
Minnesota Family Council will host its annual dinner on Saturday, May 10 in Bloomington.
