Helen LaFave, Michele Bachmann's Openly Gay Stepsister, Attended Obama's Inauguration (VIDEO)
Salon.com's Natasha Lennard has unearthed footage of Helen LaFave, Michele Bachmann's openly gay stepsister, being interviewed following President Barack Obama's January 2009 Inauguration.
LaFave is featured in the clip with Nia Wronski, whom The Daily Beast reports is her partner of 15 years.
Julie Philips, the videographer, asks LaFave what it means to her to be at the inauguration.
“It’s very important to me to be here just because it’s starting something new," LeFave says in the video. "Just the movement throughout the country it seems like a reawakening of the country, and to be part of that and to see the first African American president take office is very meaningful."
Michele Bachmann's husband Marcus runs Bachmann & Associates, a Christian counseling clinic in Minnesota that reportedly practices a type of therapy that treats homosexuality as a curable disorder.
When pressed on the matter by a local reporter earlier this week, the conservative congresswoman declined to address the subject.
Marcus Bachmann recently came under fire for comments he made last year comparing gay individuals to "barbarians" who "need to be educated" and "disciplined." The Star Tribune reports that he sought to distance himself from the remarks by saying, "I was talking in reference to children. Nothing, nothing to do with homosexuality. That's not my mindset. That's not my belief system. That's not the way I would talk."
The Washington Post recently reported on Bachmann and her husband's political views:
...They share a bond born of a mutual religious awakening in high school and college, a deep faith in an especially conservative form of Lutheranism, and a common abhorrence of homosexuality.“Their career in politics has always been about pursuing a social conservative agenda,” Larry Jacobs, a political scientist and longtime Bachmann watcher at the University of Minnesota, said of the couple. He said that Michele Bachmann’s initial race for the state Senate, in which she ousted a more moderate Republican, was “broadly over gay rights.”
The presidential hopeful recently signed a controversial pledge released by the The Family Leader, an Iowa-based conservative group, which entails standing behind a "federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman."
WATCH:
Helen LaFave and Nia Wronski at the Inauguration Jan. 20, 2009 from julie phillips on Vimeo.
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First Posted: 07/15/11 10:52 AM ET Updated: 09/14/11 06:12 AM ET