Anoka-Hennepin schools dig in on anti-LGBT policy as lawsuit, federal investigation start
Thursday, July 21, 2011 at 1:54 pm
- 15 Comments
Anoka-Hennepin School District, the largest in the state of Minnesota, has been at the center of a tug of war between the LGBT community, which says the district is not safe for students, and religious right parents, who want all mentions of LGBT issues stricken from school curricula and programming. At issue is a policy that restricts LGBT content in the schools, a policy the school district said on Monday it would not change. In response, a pair of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit Thursday morning. In addition, federal authorities have opened an investigation into the school district.
“There is something seriously wrong in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, and district officials know it,” said Kate Kendell, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR). “In school after school, kids who are perceived as gay are harassed mercilessly until they drop out, melt down, or lash back. This epidemic of harassment—unlike anything we’ve seen in neighboring districts — is plainly fueled by the district’s shameful and illegal policy singling out LGBT people and LGBT people alone for total exclusion from acknowledgment within the classroom.”
The NCLR, along with the Southern Poverty Law Center, filed suit on behalf of five of the district’s students on Thursday. The students allege harassment because they identify as or are perceived to be LGBT, and the lawsuit targets the district’s “sexual orientation curriculum policy,” which limits discussions of LGBT issues in the classroom and in school programming.
That policy says that discussion of sexual orientation should be “addressed within individual family homes, churches or community organizations.” The policy has been vociferously defended by the Parents Action League, a group of conservative Christian parents headed up by Minnesota Family Council staffer Barb Anderson.
In an interview late last year with Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), a group that has been designated by the SPLC as a hate group, Anderson boasted of success in efforts to keep LGBT content out of the schools and said it’s the fault of LGBT community leaders that LGBT students get bullied.
“That is one of the tactics that they are using now, to say that by not legitimizing and normalizing homosexuality, we are creating an atmosphere in the schools that is hostile to quote-end-quote gay kids,” she said. “What they are doing is just the opposite themselves. They are creating an environment where these children that are sexually confused suddenly become affirmed as a homosexual or that they are born that way, and then these kids are locked into a lifestyle with their choices limited, and many times this can be disastrous to them as they get into the behavior which leads to disease and death in some cases.”
She added, “So, it’s really… They are the ones that are contributing to an atmosphere that can even increase bullying as more kids get into this kind of a lifestyle.”
The sexual orientation policy itself is rooted in a previous 1995 policy that said homosexuality should not be “taught/addressed as a normal, valid lifestyle” in the schools.
This spring, NCLR and SPLC urged the district to change the policy and foster a safer environment for LGBT student or it would file a civil rights lawsuit.
And just before the lawsuit was filed, CNN uncovered documents on Monday that showed the Department of Justice and the Department of Education were investigating reports of civil rights violations in the school district.
Last week, residents of Anoka-Hennepin submitted a petition with over 12,000 names asking the board to rescind the sexual orientation policy. Community members have sought the scrapping of the policy, calling on the board to make changes after a spate of suicides among district students which some say are the result of bullying based on sexual orientation.
“The way things look now, I don’t see that happening,” said school board chair Tom Heideman of scrapping the policy. “We worked with groups on both sides of the issue when we wrote that policy and we’ve received petitions from both sides. We haven’t heard anything that really tells us we’ve got a bad policy.”
That triggered today’s lawsuit, which alleges violations of students’ equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, federal Title 9 rules and the Minnesota Human Rights Act.
The SPLC’s Sam Wolfe, told reporters on Thursday, “What we found was a pattern throughout the entire school district, students that are being harassed verbally and physically because of their perceived differences. They’ve all been verbally harassed, such as being called faggot, dyke, whore.”
He continued, “One kid with two fathers, the other kids would say things like, ‘Your dads are gay, you must be, too. Why don’t you suck their cocks?’”
He said that students had endured physical abuse, including being pushed down stairs and thrown into lockers and garbage cans,. One student was stabbed in the neck with a pencil because other students that he was gay.
“In too many instances the school response was woefully inadequate,” Wolfe said.
NCLR’s Kendall said the stories her group has heard from students are “truly hair-raising and stomach-turning.”
Alona Turner of the NCLR said the sexual orientation policy impacts teachers as well.
“Teachers have been told that they can’t mention gay people were killed by the Nazis and are prevented from mentioning that the major medical positions have rejected the idea that homosexuality is a choice choice,” she said.
“The district calls it a neutrality policy, but it does not bar discussions or mentions of heterosexuals or heterosexuality.”
She called the level of harassment in Anoka-Hennepin a “unique situation” that the group hasn’t seen elsewhere in Minnesota and that the sexual orientation policy is the only one of its kind that the group knows of in the country.
Kendall said if it affected anyone other than LGBT people, there would be outrage.
“If there was a policy that said we aren’t going to talk about Mormons or the contributions of Native Americans, we would never tolerate it. We would see it for what it is. It’s bigotry,” she said.
She added, “This is Michele Bachmann’s district. I think there are members of this school board that share her cruel and inhumane views toward LGBT people, and I think it has a lot to do with why this policy was enacted and why it survives.”
Three of Anoka-Hennepin school board members, including the board chair, are up for re-election this fall.
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Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 2:12 pm
But of course, the real victims here are the people who demand the government protect them from a world that includes things they don’t like.
Anoka-Hennepin isn’t promoting a Christian message, it’s an overtly hostile one.
Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 2:22 pm
This is a school district definitely failing in the arena of civics. It leaves me wondering if the curricula there includes strict constitutional interpretation ala Scalia wherein “all men are created equal” excludes women.
Jeff Wilfahrt, Rosemount, MN
Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 2:37 pm
Other news sources are reporting this story and some allow reader comments. Time and time again, people are saying “fire the staff”. What I don’t think people realize, staff is not the problem. It’s this ridiculous excuse for a school board. They set policy. They started this whole mess when they turned over control to the religious zealots in the district.
I really don’t like school boards. Just because the majority of the members have kids doesn’t mean they can make good decisions. Too often they don’t.
Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 6:33 pm
The best outcome from this would be to:
1) End the district’s discriminatory policy, of course.
2) Build momentum to adopt a California style law that mandates inclusion of eminent historical LGBT people to social studies classes.
Already, of course, social conservatives in California have begun work to try to overturn the law. Which is yet more evidence, if any was needed, that social and religious conservatives want LGBT people invisible and back in the closet.
Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 7:02 pm
I call BULLSHIT on Heideman. He’s lying. The Anoka/Hennepin policy from a model policy sent from the ADF in ’09.
[PDF]
carefully researched and crafted by ADF attorneys. This policy can …
http://www.truetolerance.org/ADFmodelbullyingpolicy.pdfSimilar
File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat – Quick View
Re: Model Anti-Bullying Policy for All Schools. Dear Friends, … carefully researched and crafted by ADF attorneys. This policy can be used or …
Re: Model Anti-Bullying Policy for All Schools
Dear Friends,
Efforts to indoctrinate our society into supporting homosexual behavior have been ever
increasing over the last several years. Many of these efforts have targeted those most
vulnerable and impressionable to this indoctrination-our children. Schools are being
transformed from places of safety and learning to places of unprecedented sexual
education. Children as young as kindergarteners are being subjected to books, programs,
and teachings designed to undermine traditional notions of sexuality and family.
Bullying has always been a problem within our schools. Many schools have rightly
responded to these problems by implementing policies aimed at reducing and/or
punishing bullying. These well intentioned policies, however, are now being perverted
and used as cloaks for the promotion of homosexually-based programs in our schools.
Examples of these efforts include the “Welcoming Schools” program by the Human
Rights Campaign and the “safe schools” initiatives by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight
Education Network (GLSEN). Other homosexual behavior advocates are demanding that
protections for “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” be inserted into existing anti-
bullying policies so that inappropriate, sexually-based materials can be promulgated to
our children.
Unfortunately, when presented with demands to adopt anti-bullying laws, policies, and
programs that further the demands of the homosexual agenda, many legislators, school
board members, and educators are not properly equipped to respond to these demands. In
many instances, anti-bullying policies devised by advocates of homosexual behavior
were adopted by policymakers where no competing or discerning voice to the contrary
was heard. This trend cannot continue.
Attached for your dissemination and use is a model anti-bullying policy. This policy was
carefully researched and crafted by ADF attorneys. This policy can be used or
implemented at either the state or local level, and is comprehensive in all respects,
carefully balancing the rights of children with the rights of administrators and educators.
Without advancing any sexual or other agendas, this policy successfully prohibits all
forms of bullying, for any reason, and cannot be argued to exclude any particular child, or class of children, who are vulnerable to being bullied.
15100 N. 90TH STREET. SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA 85260 . PHONE 480-444-0020 FAX 480-444-0028 WEB http://WWW.TELLAF.ORG
We encourage you to utilze this policy at both the local and state level-wherever it may
be necessary to confront the pro-homosexual programs that are being propagated in the
name of “safe schools” or “anti-bullying.” Sexual behavior does not need to be either
specifically identified or glorified to our children for our schools to be safe and combat
the problems associated with bullying.
Please do not hesitate to contact us regarding your efforts in utilizing this policy.
Yours very truly,
Austin Nimocks
Senior Legal Counsel
Timothy 1. Tracey
Legal Counsel
Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 7:07 pm
“There is something seriously wrong in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, and district officials know it,”
A truer statement was never written.
Isn’t it funny that as power of the Christian Right increases so does the division in this country? I very rarely see the teachings of Jesus reflected in their actions.
My favorite quote of all time is Ghandi: I like your Christ but i don’t like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ.
I was wrong, a truer statement has been written.
Pingback posted July 21, 2011 @ 9:09 pm
[...] they revealed that they are filing a Federal lawsuit on behalf of several students and families. This piece from The Minnesota Independent reveals the sequence of events leading up to the [...]
Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 10:40 pm
When you start treating some kids differently than others you start to get these ridiculous things happening. Investigations for what? I have an idea, don’t promote GLBT, don’t talk about it, don’t treat them differently, and deal with all students the same. If a student has an issue deal with it as needed. If there is someone harassing someone deal with it. These problems come from the fact that we are hypersensitive to every whim of every group and we have a society that is now run by minority groups at the expense of the average citizen in the majority. We should simply have one set of rules that everyone uses and we should stop talking about sexuality at every turn. Be gay all you want, just don’t think others need to accept it and don’t talk about it at evey turn. This simply makes no sense. Stop the madness.
Comment posted July 21, 2011 @ 10:50 pm
I believe that Anoka has just about the highest rate of gay teen suicides in the U.S.
The national media needs to get a hold of this story, as it is Bachman territory.
Comment posted July 22, 2011 @ 9:49 am
Inreality, you are essentially asking gay kids to remain closeted, so that you aren’t offended. Treat everybody the same, as long as anybody different keeps their mouths shut. Sorry, but a free country doesn’t work that way.
What is a teacher supposed to do when a kid asks, “but weren’t gays killed in the Nazi death camps too?” Right now, the teacher is prohibited from telling the truth.
Comment posted July 22, 2011 @ 2:21 pm
@Inreality, lets have the heterosexuals shed their identities eh? No talk of family, or your crushes, boyfriends/girlfriends and that oh-so-heterosexual-ritual-enforcing prom. If anyone even says anything related to heterosexuality they must get negatively reinforced by being overtly yanked out of class in front of their gay classmates for further ridicule and peer-pressure.
I dont want to know that straight people exist so lets not say anything that causes the identity enrichment or ability to thrive for those pesky heterosexuals, and for christs sake dont reinforce it and talking about it at every turn.
Stop the madness? Stop creating and perpetuating it. ALL kids deserve to thrive.
Comment posted July 22, 2011 @ 4:42 pm
…said school board chair Tom Heideman of scrapping the policy. “We worked with groups on both sides of the issue when we wrote that policy and we’ve received petitions from both sides. We haven’t heard anything that really tells us we’ve got a bad policy.”
Mr. Heideman either must be deaf, ignorant, blatantly lying, or perhaps a combination of all three. He has been told countless times by myself and others as to how and why the “neutrality” policy is a bad policy. The policy has done so much damage already, and yet he continues to deny it. Mr. Heideman, Superintendent Carslon, as well as the rest of their colleagues who are pushing this rhetoric need to resign immediately. The incalculable harm that they have done to the youth in this distinct is appalling. The most horrific thing about all of this, is that they still continue their bigoted,discriminatory actions that are causing pain, suffering and in some cases destroying lives.
Comment posted July 23, 2011 @ 5:16 pm
@IN REALITY
Actually you do have to accept Gay people. Its not illegal, they are there, have always been there, always will be there.
You don’t have to support it, but you do have to accept that they are real. Being something you are is not promoting anything. and to stop a bully you must address the reason they bully. this is clearly a group of parents that are ok with their children who are bullies, which is why they wouldn’t want it stopped, and are indeed the people that created the bullies.
If a straight person is allowed to hold hands with their straight coupling, so should the gay person. You don’t have to like it either way, but again, its not illegal.
I
Comment posted July 25, 2011 @ 12:16 pm
So is it honestly too much to ask to go to school to try and learn without being sexually harassed or have death threats? I was a victim of this horrific brutality on an almost weekly basis in Minnesota growing up as a teen/kid. I have had extensive therapy to deal with other people’s dysfunctional intollerance and cruelty plus why other boys would target me based on their own sexual desires, see me with feminine qualities as a boy and then they’d strike or lash out with verbal abuse or in some cases threaten my life… just for me being me… peaceful and trying to just get an education.
So in reality… it was the bullies having the homosexual desires and not being able to deal with it other than to lash out because they felt those desires were wrong. It was their own issue all along. Not mine. Bullies need to own their own feelings and desires and it takes an empowered and wise person to know just how to do that in a healthy but firm way.
Just imagine if ANY of this cruel and highly innapropriate behaviors were in the workplace. People would be fired or arrested. So it’s really in the best interest for both the victim AND the bully to address this situation. As a parent of a bully, this sort of behavior could lead to law suits, loss of jobs, or even prison for the bully later in life. So if people can’t get away with this sort of abuse in the workplace… why on earth can we allow CHILDREN to get away with it in schools? Seems insane.
Plus, who cares what consenting adults do with their genitals behind closed doors? I pose that question to any hetro gay haters now and it makes them responsible for their own beliefs and behaviors. They realize how rediculous it is that they even care what other people are doing with their genitals and in all honesty, it’s NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.
I own my own desires and attractions. I also own my own belief systems and my spirituality is a personal thing. I simply don’t force ANY of those things onto anyone else, but I can share them with another consenting adult. It’s having healthy boundaries and basic respect for other people.
Kids need to learn basic integrity and respect. Are we as adults teaching this to the next generation?
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