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Disagree. The definition is kind of a disaster in general. As you say it states that it is "attraction to a person without regard to their sex" which is not at all the same as "attraction to a person because of their sex". If a person is equally attracted to little girls and little boys, how does this definition exclude him?
Such a person's sexual orientation would be "bisexual" since they are attracted to people of either sex. Whether someone is a pedophile seems to me orthogonal to the question of their sexual orientation under the statute. The age part isn't relevant to the analysis. "pedophile" is not a distinct sexual orientation because it's not about the target of attractions sex.
That seems like what the original wording that was removed in the redefinition Walz signed, "Sexual orientation does not include a physical or sexual attachment to children by an adult" would imply?
If someone was a bisexual pedophile, I would expect discrimination against them based on their bisexuality to be prohibited, but discrimination against them based on their pedophilia to not be prohibited. So I'd want to clarify in law that pedophilia is not a sexual orientation for the purpose of discrimination law. That seems like exactly what the pre-revision wording does.
I guess I view the explicit exemption for pedophilia as unnecessary. The definition of sexual orientation already precludes it. So it was removed for that reason. Rather than because the MN legislature wanted to prohibit discrimination against pedophiles.
I'm just a little skeptical that out of all the potential redundancies in the legal code, they went after this one, particularly when "is pedophilia a sexuality" is the kind of thing that is actually up for debate. The legal code is not trying to minimize word count, and while I could see a case for not putting the exemption in in the first place, I don't see a reason to remove it once it's in there, unless you actually care about the effect
And the person who introduced the bill is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leigh_Finke, a poorly-passing MTF who seems a lot more motivated by trans ideology than systematic optimization of the legal code.
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And does the statute protect people on the basis of their, ahem, "bisexuality"?
Sure. If you wanted to fire a person because they were attracted to both men and women, that would be prohibited. If you wanted to fire them because they were attracted to children, that would be permitted.
It used to, but where does it permit this now?
It doesn't explicitly permit it, but neither do it's terms forbid it.
https://www.house.mn.gov/cco/journals/2023-24/J0426057.htm#7102
I think the amendment added to the bill clears this up pretty cleanly.
@wraelk, @AshLael, @zeke5123a
Off topic, but if you're back, I'd love to hear if you have any further comment on that Jaime Reed thing you posted a while back.
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I've been doing a bit of digging and am having some trouble figuring out exactly what is going on. It seems as though the basic story is:
Bill amends definition as previously discussed. A bit of a stink gets kicked up about it.
A republican legislator (Niska) responds to that stink by proposing the amendment you link to, which passes easily. But it seems that the bill he was amending was a different one to the actual Take Pride Act (H.F. 447 vs H.F. 1655) I think? And as far as I can tell the Niska amendment language is not included in the current law: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/364.09
Not sure if the Niska amendment has just not taken effect yet or if HF 447 didn't pass or what.
I don't think you have the right law, you want https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/363A.03.
But it also doesn't have the pedophilia clause, and has additional wording that isn't in either revision:
If you look in the revisions you can see that there's only been one revision to that section in 2023, but it doesn't use the new language.
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/bill.php?b=house&f=hf447&ssn=0&y=2023 is the bill, and if you look at the current bill text, that text is not in it: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF447&type=bill&version=3&session=ls93&session_year=2023&session_number=0 . In fact, very little of the text is in it.
it looks like it was removed after the second version: https://www.revisor.mn.gov/bills/text.php?number=HF447&version=2&session=ls93&session_year=2023&session_number=0
As best I can tell, once it got to the Senate they just completely rewrote the bill? https://www.senate.mn/journals/2023-2024/20230522077.pdf#page=824, if I'm understanding this correctly they just amended the bill to delete everything past "this will take effect" and wrote their own bill, which seems unbelievable, but... the bill passed, the text isn't changed, and the latest revision of the bill has the text they changed it to.
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