The Anoka-Hennepin School District and lawyers for six students who sued the district over bullying began talks this week in an attempt to reach a settlement. While those talks were underway, the Parents Action League submitted a petition to the school board urging it not to budge on a policy that limits discussion of LGBT issues in the schools. And PAL came under scrutiny by other parents who questioned the group’s ties to the Minnesota Family Council.

The district and lawyers for the students met early this week in hopes that a settlement could be reached in the lawsuit. Both sides have declined to comment on the talks other than to say they were productive. The dialogue ended Tuesday without resolution, and no more discussions have been scheduled.

On Monday, the Parents Action League, a group of conservative Christian parents in the district, appealed to school officials to maintain its “neutrality policy,” a directive enacted two years ago that limits discussions of LGBT issues in the district and one that the lawsuit alleges creates a hostile environment for LGBT students.

“I’m here on behalf of the Parents Action League to support the sexual orientation policy,” said Lori Thompson at Monday’s school board meeting. “It is an excellent policy. It honors the rights of all parents and guardians. We feel that teachers should not be injecting their personal views in the classroom on any subject.”

Thompson said the group had gathered 1,052 signatures.

“We, the Parents Action League, along with every person who put their name on the petition, are asking the board to please keep the sexual orientation policy in place and keep controversial social issues at home where they belong,” Thompson said.

After Thompson addressed the board, Kevin Peterson of Brooklyn Center also urged that the policy be maintained — and then revealed he was once gay.

“I used to be gay, back in the ’80s and ’90s,” he said. “I used to be a member of Act Up and marched in a few gay pride parades.”

“I was trying to get our agenda into high schools and even elementary schools,” he added.

Peterson claimed that most people who are LGBT don’t want to be.

“Most people with same-sex attraction don’t like this about themselves and don’t want to act on those attractions,” he said. “In other words most homosexuals are not gay, and we gay activists knew that it was very important to reach those sexually confused people. We wanted the young guys top know that they shouldn’t be confused about those attractions that they should understand that they can’t possibly change and gay is good.”

He said it was all about recruitment.

“What I was doing in effect was recruiting them to be gay and get into the lifestyle. That’s what happened to me when i got into college.”

But not all testifiers at Monday night’s meeting were in support of the policy. Parent Melissa Thompson said many forms of diversity are discussed in Anoka-Hennepin schools and questioned why sexual orientation is being singled out.

“You don’t need to take on a belief to respect the person who has it,” she said. “We openly discuss and recognize all kinds of diversity from cultural to religious to economic, so I ask you why we refuse to acknowledge anything gay in our schools?”

She added, “Nobody is asking that homosexuality be taught, quite simply because it can’t be. But just because someone refuses to believe that people are born gay doesn’t change that fact for a gay person. The idea that if we deny something that offends us it will disappear is childish, hurtful and hardly neutral.”

Thompson was also critical of the activities of the Parents Action League.

“I recently received an email directly from Lori Thompson of the Parents Action League soliciting my signature. She received my email address from the Minnesota Family Council, and I have a copy of the email for you all to see that,” she said, holding up a copy of the email. “It was directly solicited from this political group that has made a career out of disrespecting children in our district. I want to show the connection.”

PAL’s spokesperson, at least in the past, has been Barb Anderson who works for the Minnesota Family Council. Anderson recently appeared on the radio program of Americans for the Truth About Homosexuality, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center lists as a hate group. In that interview, Anderson said she’s tried to get “ex-gay” therapy into the district’s schools and blamed LGBT groups for the bullying of LGBT students.

Thompson raised another concern about PAL to the school board; she says the group has been soliciting signatures from students.

“The other concern I have is the fact that they solicit signatures from children as young as 13,” she said. “Now, they want to paint us as being inappropriate in regard to children, but to put children in that position is beyond unacceptable.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is a part of a movement in the Senate to reform the use of the filibuster, and together with Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York she’s circulating a petition urging changes to the Senate rules.

Until the 1970s, breaking a filibuster required 67 votes, and currently it takes 60 votes to break a filibuster. Senate Democrats want that threshold lowered, possibly as low as 51 votes (Democrats currently have the majority with 53 members). They also want changes to the way senators can filibuster by ending the silent objection which allows the stoppage of legislation to be anonymous.

The Klobuchar petition says:

The current rules in the United States Senate make it far too easy to obstruct. Any senator can halt progress on important bills by threatening to filibuster without explanation.

If a senator wants to block a bill with a filibuster, he or she should stand on the floor of the Senate and make the case to the American people.

This is the month to change the filibuster rules. Please stand with Senators Klobuchar and Gillibrand in asking their Senate colleagues to reform the filibuster now.

Klobuchar has backed filibuster reform at least since last April when she spoke with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on the issue:

Klobuchar: “So, a number of us are saying, well, can we get it down some more? Can we still allow for this debate? Can we allow for people to stand on the floor and push the filibuster so they have to own what they’re doing? If they want to filibuster unemployment benefits for people who are out of work for no fault of their own because Wall Street messed up, are they going to take to the floor and do that day after day after day? That`s another reform that we’d love to see.”

Maddow: “And you’d support that?”

Klobucher: “Yes.”

“When you pick on ACORN, you pick on ME!” the petition says. “Congresswoman Michele Bachmann would rather pick on ACORN than stop the foreclosure crisis — even though Bachmann’s district has the highest rate of foreclosures in Minnesota.”

In April, the Minnesota Independent found that Bachmann’s 6th Congressional District had Minnesota’s highest rate of foreclosures as a percentage of households, at 1.80 percent.

Last week, Bachmann introduced a bill that would forbid the Department of Housing and Urban Development from giving money to nonprofits under indictment — and she was very specific in mentioning ACORN as the target of her legislation. She also launched a petition urging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to support her bill.

“Bachmann is on the attack — and is trying to de-fund the very work ACORN does that is keeping so many families from losing their homes,” says the ACORN petition.

Unlike the Bachmann petition, the list of signers and their comments are not open to the public, and it does not say to whom the names will be given.

Here is the text of her affidavit for the Court:

I began working on Tim Walz’s campaign for the United States House of Representatives in Minnesota’s First Congressional District in March, 2006, as Campaign Manager.

Over the next four months, I contacted the Secretary of State’s office several times with general questions on how to file and specific questions regarding the rules for Nominating Petitions in Lieu of Filing Fee.

I called the Secretary of State’s office once in April 2006, two or three times in May 2006 and two or three times in June 2006.

I was told by different persons in the Secretary of State’s office on at least two occasions that Nominating Petitions in Lieu of Filing Fee require 1000 signatures and that the petition must be signed between July 4, 2006 and July 18, 2006. The written information which they sent me and that they published on the official website confirmed this.

Because I was so advised, the Walz Campaign decide [sic] to pay the $300 filing fee and not take the chance of trying to secure 1000 signatures during the filing period.

Further Affiant sayeth not.

[signed] Kerry M. Greeley

A copy of the affidavit is on p. 15 of the Supplemental Memorandum in Support for Order to Show Cause on the Louis H. Reiter vs. Mary Kiffmeyer case webpage.

The question now comes to: Was the Secretary of State’s Office playing political favorites or is it merely incompetent?

One point needs to be made, however. Rep. Gutknecht says he uses the petition instead of filing fee option to prove he is a good fiscal conservative. And yet, by filing he uses up a certain amount of the Office of the Secretary of State’s time, therefore burning taxpayer dollars. This is not a big deal. All candidates do the same thing.

Yet those who pay a filing fee at least in a token way reimburse the Secretary of State for her efforts. Gil Gutknecht does not. In other words, when Rep. Gutknecht doesn’t pay, the taxpayers must.

Okay, so this is a small issue. $300 is nothing compared to the cost of the war in Iraq (at least $1.5 billion per week) and the tax breaks for the wealthy that Mr. Gutknecht has unwaveringly supported (in the $100s of billions).

But let’s face it: Mr. Gutknecht has made a big deal about being a “fiscal conservative”, which he claims he proves each election year when he makes the taxpayers foot his filing fee.

I’m afraid that Mr. Gutknecht has become a “fiscal conservative” in name only. After 12 years in office he has become too adept in the ways of Washington and too adroit in the political game of robbing Peter to pay Paul.

“A funny thing happened to me a week ago,” writes Rep. Gil Gutknecht in an article published in the Winona Daily News, Sunday, August 20. “I was in my driveway, grilling chicken on a Saturday night when a nice man in a Jeep Liberty drove up.” The man said he was there to serve him legal papers.

Gutknecht continues, “The papers were details of a lawsuit filed to keep my name off the ballot during the September primary and, presumably, the November general election.

“I was surprised. I’d never been served before. Another thought came to mind:… ‘How much do you tip a guy who serves you with papers?’”

Despite Mr. Gutknecht’s humor, being embroiled in a lawsuit at this point of his campaign, especially over a process he’s bee doing for 12 years, must be a shock. And I can empathize. One thing that drives me crazy is being accused of something I know I’m not guilty of.

On point is obvious: The Gutknecht campaign has felt that it has been following the correct procedure in submitting a petition in place of the filing fee for his candidacy. The difficulty it’s forced to face is that Minnesota election law is ambiguous on the subject of when the signatures for the filing fee waiver petition can be collected: Actually, it simply doesn’t say.

The question that the Minnesota Supreme Court must decide is whether there is no time limit, as the Minnesota Secretary of State and the Gutknecht campaign argue, or whether the 14-day time limit for collecting signatures on filing petitions (not filing fee waiver petitions) that are applicable to non-major party endorsed candidates applies.

But is the lawsuit “a political dirty trick,” as Mr. Gutknecht contends?

One way to evaluate such charges would be to ask: Would the charge be valid if the sides were switched? In other words, would it be a “a political dirty trick” if Tim Walz submitted a petition instead of paying the filing fee and the Republicans brought the legal challenge?

The lawsuit does raise valid questions. And it’s too bad for the political process that the Minnesota legislature didn’t write a more clearly worded law. But a “political dirty trick” it is not. Call it what you will, in the long run it’s just part of the process in tweaking and improving our ever-evolving democratic system.

The court case is online here. From the case website: “Oral arguments will be heard before the Supreme Court on Tuesday, Aug. 22, 9 a.m. in Minnesota Judicial Center Room 300. Seating is first-come, first-served. The Rochester Post-Bulletin and KAAL-TV Rochester will provide the pool cameras, and Minnesota Public Radio has reserved the audio jack in the courtroom.”