The anti-LGBT organization, Minnesota Child Protection League, is urging caucus-goers to add an anti-transgender plank to the party platforms. In an email to supporters on Tuesday, the group distributed a precinct caucus resolution called “Protecting Our children.”

“Silence Is Not An Option,” the group wrote “We must and we will speak up to protect children! Governments and schools are forcing boys and girls to share bathrooms, showers, and locker rooms in schools across our state. They are violating the children and expoing [sic] them to harm. IT MUST STOP!”

The resolution seeks to add to party platforms a ban on all government entities from allowing transgender people from using the appropriate facilities. It concludes:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Minnesota legislature require that all government buildings provide that restrooms, locker rooms, and shower rooms accessible by multiple people at the same time designate them for the exclusive use of the biological male sex only or by the biological female sex only, and that no business establishment shall be subject to criminal, civil, or administrative penalties for requiring employees, patrons, students, or any other person to use facilities in accordance with their biological sex.

It’s extremely unlikely that DFL caucus-goers would elevate the resolution on March 1. The Republican Party of Minnesota, however, has recently adopted the most anti-LGBT party platform in that party’s history and the Child Protection League has support from both rank-and-file Republicans as well as elected officials.

In addition to the anti-transgender resolution, the Child Protection League shared a letter to the editor from one of its founders, Barb Anderson, who is upset that a safe schools training for teachers in the Anoka-Hennepin School District included information about transgender youth. Anderson was also a founder of the Parents Action League, a group that was named an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2012, after PAL’s efforts to maintain a “No Promo Homo” policy in the district.

In the letter, Anderson continued her long history of disparaging rhetoric about the LGBT community, and transgender people in particular. Some choice quotes from the letter:

“Can you see who they are targeting? Children”

“Their list of counterfeit genders has grown from 2 to 50+ with fabricated pronouns included.”

“I hope our teachers will have the courage to stand up to these gender-radical bullies.”

“The transgender movement is part of a dangerous political agenda that seeks to erase all distinctions between male and female.”

Anderson’s letter also displays a fundamental ignorance about the difference between the terms “sex” and “gender”:

“These misguided “experts” also claimed that sex is separate from gender and that “sex is assigned at birth.” Fact: Gender is the same as sex, and a person’s sex is not assigned at birth; it is identified at birth,” she wrote.

(The term “sex” is a biological status with labels such as male, female, or intersex, and determined by chromosomes, anatomy, and other biological markers. “Gender” encompasses attitudes and behaviors that society assigns to “sex.” For example, femininity is associated with long hair, but nothing about one’s status as female (sex) dictates that person to have long hair. Long hair is a gendered cultural norm; humans aren’t born with hairstyles, but different cultures have varying interpretations about what hair length means for a given society’s gender roles.)

The Child Protection League circulated a caucus resolution in 2014 urging party faithful to include a plank against safe schools and anti-bullying legislation. That effort was not successful.

Here’s text of the caucus resolution as well as the email from the Child Protection League and the letter to the editor from Barb Anderson:

“Protecting Our Children”
2016 PRECINCT CAUCUS RESOLUTION
Whereas preserving fundamental privacy and public safety is a primary purpose of state government; and

Whereas biological sex is defined as the physical condition of being male or female as determined by a person’s chromosomes and identified at birth by that person’s anatomy; and

Whereas government entities include any city, county, city and county, public university system, community college district, school district, special district, or any other political subdivision or governmental instrumentality of, or within, the state; and

Whereas some schools and school districts have adopted policies forcing K-12 students to share bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers with students of the opposite biological sex who are confused about their sexual identity; and

Whereas the Obama administration falsely claims that a U.S. Civil Rights law known as Title IX requires male students who think they are girls and female students who think they are boys to be treated contrary to their biology; and

Whereas this arbitrary and dangerous interpretation of Civil Rights law is vigorously challenged by numerous legal scholars and has never been tested in court; and

Whereas extreme gender teaching is encouraging children as young as preschool that they must choose their gender, which may include either male or female, both male and female, neither male or female, or “gender-fluid” (continually changing gender identity); and

Whereas the privacy, modesty, and safety of students and the public are being deeply violated by policies that mix individuals of the opposite biological gender in private facilities; therefore
BE IT RESOLVED that school districts designate student restrooms, locker rooms and shower rooms as being exclusively for youth by either biological male or biological female persons; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Minnesota legislature require that all government buildings provide that restrooms, locker rooms, and shower rooms accessible by multiple people at the same time designate them for the exclusive use of the biological male sex only or by the biological female sex only, and that no business establishment shall be subject to criminal, civil, or administrative penalties for requiring employees, patrons, students, or any other person to use facilities in accordance with their biological sex.

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