The Safe and Supportive Schools Act passed important committees in the Minnesota House and Senate in the past week despite efforts by three figureheads opposed to LGBT rights who testified before the House Education Policy committee on Friday and the Senate Education Committee on Tuesday.

Young people, teachers and experts testified to the need for strong anti-bullying laws in Minnesota, but three leaders in the anti-LGBT movement testified against the Safe and Supportive Schools Act.

Barb Anderson is an occasional researcher for the Minnesota Family Council. She was also part of the Parents Action League in the Anoka-Hennepin School District which fought unsuccessfully to bring “ex-gay therapy” into the school district’s curriculum. For its efforts, the PAL was listed as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. GLAAD has also pegged Anderson for its Commentator Accountability Project, which provides dossiers on anti-gay individuals to media outlets.

On Tuesday, Anderson claimed that anti-bullying efforts are fronts to indoctrinate children in homosexual behavior:

Homosexual endorsement programs have already been introduced in Minnesota schools in elementary grades and anti-bullying programs such as Welcoming Schools where children as young as 5 are subjected to mental and emotional manipulation through pro-gay classroom activities that confuse children and set up conflict in innocent minds over family, gender roles and parental authority. Through a wide range of pro-homosexual picture books and puppets the family is redefined and children are indoctrinated to approve of homosexuality and transgenderism even before they are old enough to know what sexuality is or the implications of homosexual behavior

Here’s audio of Anderson’s testimony in the House on Friday.

Anderson’s colleague is Tom Prichard of the Minnesota Family Council. GLAAD has also listed him in its Commentator Accountability Project and among the reasons are statements he’s made about anti-bullying efforts.

On the issue of LGBT teens committing suicide:

“I would agree that youth who embrace homosexuality are at greater risk, because they’ve embraced an unhealthy sexual identity and lifestyle. These alternative sexual identifications or lifestyles deny the reality that we are created male and female. To live or try to live in conflict with how we are made will invariably cause problems, e.g. emotional, psychological and social. Notwithstanding gay activist assertions to the contrary, people aren’t gay, lesbian, transgender, etc. by God’s design or nature. We are male and female with sexual expression designed for a lifelong union between a man and a woman. Denying or fighting against this reality is the reason alternative forms of sexual expression, whether homosexual or heterosexual, will put people at greater risk. To assert otherwise is to deny reality and involves “kicking against the goad” to use a biblical analogy.

Prichard was much more subdued in his testimony against the Safe and Supportive Schools Act.

“This bill goes far, far beyond addressing bullying to addressing social political and even diversity re-education,” he said at Tuesday’s Senate hearing. “It goes being stopping bullying to, in my view, shaping the beliefs of kids 5, 10, 15 years old on matters of sexuality, family structure and beyond.”

Here’s Prichard’s full testimony from the hearing in the House on Friday.

Katherine Kersten has written columns against Safe Schools curriculum in the Minneapolis school district. In January, she accused those advocating the Safe and Supportive Schools Act of being “bullies.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Kersten

Here’s Kersten’s full testimony from Friday’s House hearing: