Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson said comments he made about the state Supreme Court and gay marriage were "poorly worded," after an interest group released a recording of his remarks and said he was tampering with the judicial process.

In January, Johnson, DFL-Willmar, in a meeting with a group of pastors in New London, was talking about the proposal to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions in the state constitution. The DFL-led Senate has blocked the measure the last few years, and gay marriage foes have placed much of the blame at Johnson's feet.

Johnson and other Democrats have argued that the state's law prohibiting gay marriage is sufficient, and doesn't need to be enshrined in the constitution. Johnson told the pastors that Supreme Court justices told him the current law wouldn't be overturned.

In the recording - made without Johnson's knowledge - he says he had talked with two of the three justices named Anderson on the bench and they had told him, "Dean, we're not going to do this. We're not going to do this." He also said former Chief Justice Kathleen Blatz, who recently stepped down, told him, "'We're not going to touch it.'"

The tape was released Wednesday by Minnesota for Marriage, one of the groups leading the charge for the gay marriage ban. Another group, Minnesota Citizens in Defense of Marriage, called for Johnson's resignation from the Senate and said it would launch a petition drive to that end.

Johnson, who on Wednesday was at Camp Shelby, Miss., to visit Minnesota National Guard troops bound for Iraq, said in a statement through his office that his remarks were misconstrued by his political opponents. But he also apologized "if any damage has been done to the integrity of the court."

He also said he had only one conversation with a Supreme Court justice about the gay marriage issue when they bumped into each other at the Capitol, and that the conversation was brief and "more out of friendship."

In a telephone interview from Camp Shelby on Wednesday evening with the West Central Tribune of Willmar, Johnson said he was disappointed that a fellow member of the clergy would have taped him secretly.

Supreme Court spokesman John Kostouros said in a statement that "any suggestion that a justice made a commitment to vote a certain way on a case or issue if it came before them would be a serious ethical breach ... no such promise or commitment was made."

Blatz also issued a denial. "It would have been highly unethical for me as the chief justice to ... give assurances to anyone on how the court was likely to decide an issue that might come before it. It just never happened."

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