Gov. Tim Pawlenty's presidential candidate audition interview in Newseek magazine included a passage that will likely make Minnesota's GLBT community cringe.

Pawlenty was lauded by gay rights activists in 1993, when as a freshman Republican legislator, he supported adding sexual orientation to categories of employment, housing and other discrimination prohibited by state law. He has since said he regrets that vote, a position he reiterated to Newsweek's Howard Fineman.

He went on to spell out a change he wants made in the statute: It should not outlaw discrimination against "things like cross-dressing, and a variety of other people involved in behaviors that weren't based on sexual orientation, just a preference for the way they dressed and behaved." He continued: "If you are a third-grade teacher and you are a man and you show up on Monday as Mr. Johnson and you show up on Tuesday as Mrs. Johnson, that is a little confusing to the kids. So I don't like that."

In fact, there's no mention of cross-dressing in the definition of sexual orientation as it pertains to the state's Human Rights Act. But Pawlenty's utterances on the topic are bound to encourage gay rights opponents to mount an effort to make that 16-year-old anti-discrimination law less sweeping. With DFLers in charge at the Legislature, they won't get far -- but they could get far enough to force DFLers to cast politically sensitive election-year votes.