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CPL Focused Minnesota Legislation 2022

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September 2022

Child Protection League focused on the following bills in the legislative session 2022.  The information included the bill numbers and whether CPL supported or opposed the bill and why. HF=House file; SF=Senate file.
CPLAction Legislative Update 2021 Handout (PDF)

Obscenity Exemption to Prohibit Obscenity in Schools Act
Support HF232 and SF1609
This bill removes the K-12 school exemption to the MN obscenity statute. The exemption currently permits schools to use obscene materials if they are considered “educational.” This bill would remove the school exemption and entitle parents to file civil lawsuits and recover damages for displaying and disseminating obscene material which is deemed harmful to minors according to statute.

MS 617.291 Section 1, subdivision 2: “It is in the best interest of the health, welfare, and safety of minors that dissemination of sexually explicit written, photographic, printed, sound or published material are deemed harmful to minors.”

Digital and Online Library Database Resources for K-12 Students
Support HF467 and SF1016
Parents, legislators and most school board members are unaware of how easily students can access porn and obscenity through their laptops and chrome books. This bill requires K-12 school online research database services to BLOCK access to porn and other obscene materials as defined in MN statute. Most K-12 schools use the MN eLibrary (ELM) that use databases such as EBSCO and GALE. These databases link to porn and obscenity on their platforms bypassing school filters. Only the database provider can filter content. This bill also states that database providers who fail to BLOCK this access constitute a breach of contract and payment for their services can be withheld.

Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE)

Oppose HF358 AND SF632
This is the same legislation passed by the MN House (HF1414) in 2019 which mandated comprehensive sex education (CSE) in every MN K-12 public/charter school. CSE removes all natural and protective boundaries for children and teens, encouraging early sexual exploration in graphic detail. CSE uses pornographic illustrations and graphic descriptions to teach children as young as 10 that all ‘consensual’ sexual activity is their right. It also normalizes all gender identities and permits unlicensed organizations such as Planned Parenthood (PP) into the classroom. PP already teaches 4th graders that oral, anal, and vaginal sex are “normal” as is masturbation alone or with others.
References:

Constitutional Amendment for Education
Oppose HF874 and SF2563
Note: The senate bill is authored by Senators Michelle Benson, Jeff Howe and John Hoffman)

This bill has hidden agendas that basically hands over much of the authority over education from the legislature to the state which includes departments of the executive branch and the courts. In our Republic, the legislature determines policy, not the executive or judicial branches. This bill essentially extends MN state government constitutional authority over education of “all children;” requires state to adopt “uniform achievement standards” to define “quality” for all children.

The bill numbers may have changed but the content and our opposition to these bills remain the same as in 2019-2020 legislative sessions. Read our testimonies in opposition to this Constitutional Amendment for Education.

Equal Rights Amendment

Oppose HF726, HF727 AND SF342
This bill is presented as an “equal rights” constitutional amendment but would recognize an unlimited number of gender identities, including no gender and gender fluidity. Gender would no longer have a fixed definition; erasing the meaning of male and female. It would affect family law, adoption law, health law, athletic policies, public and private spaces across all civic, corporate, private, educational and religious organizations by enshrining all gender identities as equal under the law. There would be NO EXCEPTIONS to a new constitutional right. It would especially erase the bodily privacy and physical safety of women and children by giving biological males the ‘right’ to invade their locker rooms, showers, bathrooms, sports, and dressing rooms.

The question that will be submitted to the people for a vote shall be “Equal Rights Amendment,” however; it isn’t equal rights for women. In reality, it is a “Gender Spectrum Equality Amendment.”

Protect Minnesota’s Kids Act
(Stricter Penalties for Trafficking in Child Sexual Abuse Imagery)
Support HF3881, SF3894

Called the Protect Minnesota’s Kids Act (PMKA), the bills mirror federal penalties for production, distribution, receipt and possession of child sexual abuse imagery. The bills also require criminals to register as predatory offenders and allow public access to their criminal histories. The bills give law enforcement officers more resources to combat child predators; especially those who are trading these images online.

Child Protection League has produced SHATTERED, a documentary about this issue and these bills. Please watch the 25-minute video at The Protect Minnesota’s Kids Act, read the information and help us get these bills passed!

Defining Male and Female

Support HF1657
The proposed bill would define “male” as a person with XY sex chromosomes and “female” as a person with XX sex chromosomes and prohibits male students from participating in elementary, high school, and post-secondary female-only sports teams. It requires restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms, shower rooms, and any other facility or setting where a student may be in a state of undress to be designated female only or male only. Violators would be guilty of a petty misdemeanor.

Talk Therapy Ban – Prohibit Counseling for Minors
Oppose HF2156 and SF1871

Under the negatively charged misnomer “Conversion Therapy,” this bill would criminalize any professional counseling to minors who are struggling with sexual identity issues unless that counselling affirms the child’s gender identity dysfunction. This bill is an aggressive authoritarian attack on freedom of speech protected in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution; it is a massive intrusion into families and parental rights; and it criminalizes the free exercise of a person’s religion, a fundamental right protected by the first amendment.

Parental Rights
Supports SF2909

It is a fundamental right of a parent to direct the upbringing, education and care of their minor children. Schools have been withholding information from parents about their own children. This bill would give rights back to the parents to direct the upbringing, health, well-being, mental health and education of their children.