At a meeting of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board on Monday evening, Barb Anderson, a leader in Minnesota’s anti-LGBT movement, told the board that Gay-Straight Alliances are recruiting centers for the homosexual lifestyle, that they are dangerous to students, and that the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which assist with GSAs, encouraged statutory rape.

Anderson said, “GSAs typically begin with a focus on safety and bullying prevention but their scope soon expands, GSA students often become political lobbyists who advocate specific pro-gay legislation and policy changes in our in our schools. Student activists from GSAs are taught how to recruit other students.”

The board was hearing a recommendation from the district’s anti-bullying task force that urges the district to include positive portrayals of LGBT people in history, support Gay-Straight Alliance, and celebrate LGBT history month in an effort to make the district more inclusive for LGBT students.

She continued, “The American College of Pediatricians has warned schools about the danger of premature labeling of students as gay because it can lead some kids into homosexual behaviors, behaviors which data on the CDC website shows to be exceptionally dangerous. GSAs will draw more confused and questioning youth into gay experimentation. A homosexual club is not a position of neutrality but is a danger to the health and the future of kids in District 11.”

The American College of Pediatricians is a small group of conservative Christian pediatricians that split from the American Academy of Pediatricians over abortion and LGBT issues. The group poses as a large professional organization but is composed of just a few hundred members who espouse an anti-LGBT agenda, compared to the mainstream American Academy of Pediatricians which boasts 60,000 members.

Anderson also claimed, without citing evidence, that the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which supports GSAs, advocates statutory rape. “GSAs were established by the national GLSEN… GLSEN advocates books for GSA teens that show positive portrayals of homosexual sex between boys, homosexual sex between underage youth and adults, and pornography use.”

Anderson, who co-founded the Parents Action League, a group the Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled an anti-LGBT hate group, has a long history in the district.

As the American Independent noted in its overview of the district’s policies on LGBT issues:

For almost two decades, Anderson has worked to ban books that she considered to be “pro-homosexual.” She even managed to remove posters for support hotlines for LGBT youth. In early 2002, Anderson spotted a poster hanging in Champlin Park High School that offered “a toll-free resource, referral and counseling service” to LGBT students. The poster included a number, 1-877-GLBT-543, and was paid for by the state of Minnesota and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Having come to the school to vote for in the 2002 state and federal elections, Anderson was incensed. “I was unprepared to be faced with another issue altogether — a homosexual propaganda poster on the main bulletin board by the administration office,” she wrote on the Minnesota Family Council’s website. She was successful: The school took down the poster.

Anderson has been an “education researcher” for the Minnesota Family Council for at least the past decade. The council did not return The American Independent’s inquiry as to whether Anderson is still a researcher or if she is employed by the organization.

Anderson is also a co-founder and spokesperson for the anti-LGBT group, Minnesota Child Protection League. She has a long history of anti-LGBT rhetoric which has landed her on GLAAD’s Commentator Accountability Project.