Minnesotans are nice people. That's why it was especially disheartening to witness the nasty jabs that legislators opposed to the Marriage Amendment hurled at the bill's supporters once it became clear that the Senate was indeed going to pass the bill (as it turned out, in a bi-partisan vote) on to the House.

UpTake Minnesota catalogued many of the accusations that were made during their live coverage of the debate via Twitter:

Sen Dibble: Angry, divisive campaign to denigrate gays will send message to MN schools that it's OK to bully.

Sen Pappas reads letter from German Jew comparing anti-gay marriage amend[ment] to Nazi revok[ing] of citizenship

Sen Harrington: I'm not comfortable using Leviticus to legislate since it also says slavery is OK.

Sen Goodwin: Think about how different Christianity would be if Jesus ask crowd to vote on stoning Mary Magdalene.

Sen. Berglin: At one point law said women were property of men when they got married. She's glad that was not put in [the] Constitution.

So, to review, in the combined opinion of the Senators mentioned above, people who believe Minnesotans should be able to vote on the definition of marriage are pro-bullying, Nazi-inspired, slavery-sympathetic, pro-stoning, anti-woman, and (of course) anti-gay bigots.

None of which is very nice, or at all true.

Will the House debate be a better example of Minnesota Nice? Stay tuned.