Apple Valley's Scott Dibble, MN Same-Sex Marriage Law Author, 'Pulled from Street Politics'

The Associated Press describes the backgrounds of two south Minneapolis legislators—state Sen. Scott Dibble (DFL-Minneapolis) and state Rep. Karen Clark (DFL-Minneapolis)—to make gay marriage legal in Minnesota:

Dibble, 47, graduated from high school in the Minneapolis suburb of Apple Valley and came out in college. He cut his teeth politically in the late 1980s as a member of the Minnesota chapter of ACT UP—a gay civil rights group that engaged in civil disobedience out of anger toward government neglect of AIDS and HIV sufferers. He got an early chance to join the establishment from Clark, who tapped him to run one of her re-election campaigns.

"I pulled him from street politics," she said. Dibble was elected to the House in 2000, and in 2002 to the state Senate. He holds the southwest Minneapolis seat once occupied by the late Allan Spear, who in 1974 became one of the very first U.S. elected officials to come out of the closet.

Read the full AP story online.