Extremist Anti-LGBTQ Groups, Including Moms for Liberty, Rally Forces Ahead of Anchorage School Board Meeting

You'd think after Anchorage voters delivered far-right candidates crushing defeats in the last two municipal elections, conservatives would have learned their lesson and pivoted from promoting lower 48 culture wars to talking about issues that people actually care about.

You'd be wrong, of course.

Anti-LGBTQ groups, including the Alaska Family Council, anti-government organization Alaska Parents' Rights in Education, and Florida-based extremist organization Moms for Liberty, are planning to peddle fear and attack LGBTQ students at the September 19th Anchorage School Board meeting.

The three organizations appear on a flyer shared to the far-right Save Anchorage Facebook turd late last evening — a blatant attempt to entice individuals into attending next week's meeting by claiming that the Anchorage School Board is hiding student gender identity issues from parents.

The Moms for Liberty logo on the flyer references an "Alaska Chapter" which, according to Moms for Liberty's own website, doesn't exist. Mysterious! It could be, however, a reference to the Mat-Su chapter and a not-so-subtle signal that the Karens out in the valley intend to expand their reach into Anchorage.

And bonus info — Andrew Satterfield, who Forrest Dunbar trounced by more than 17 points in last year's general election for Alaska State Senate District J, is now the listed state affiliate leader for Alaska Parents' Rights in Education.

The right-wing coordinated effort to pack the school board meeting is certainly politically motivated. School board campaigns are about to kick in high gear and noteworthy is that two-time failed school board candidate, Bronson supporter, anti-masker, COVID conspiracy theorist, and PragerU proponent, Kay Schuster, has filed to run for Anchorage School Board, presumably as an unpopular and divisive parental rights candidate.

The language on the flyer - designed to invoke fear and mislead people into believing that education professionals are concealing naughty things behind closed classroom doors, sounds awfully familiar when compared to the inane online ramblings of former Democrat-turned-Alaska Republican Jay McDonald, who has peddled many of the same or similar anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theories across social media as part of his lonely and sad one-person war against the school district.

Earlier this year, McDonald shared misinformation about the book, 'Let's Talk About It,' during an Anchorage School Board meeting. Board members received death threats after Faux News failed to fact-check McDonald's assertions before publishing a wildly inaccurate article — or, perhaps more accurately, an intentional political smear.

On his bought and paid for X account, McDonald recently pinned a post defaming school board president Margo Bellamy and school superintendent Jharrett Bryantt as child groomers. Child grooming is defined as the act of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in a child or young adult in order to build trust and gain access to them for the purposes of sexual abuse. McDonald's assertion, no matter how baseless, is serious and quite disturbing.

Whittling away the right-wing bullshit

What the far-right is after is to get enough members of the vocal minority together in one room (to give the false impression they represent a majority voice) and attempt to bully the Anchorage School Board into adopting a policy that would force the district to notify parents if their child requests to use pronouns that don't necessarily align with their gender at birth. They claim this is a "common sense" ask, but maybe not so much.

Generally speaking, pronoun policies serve a positive purpose. Recognizing chosen pronouns is a way to show respect for an individual's gender identity and such policies can help protect transgender and non-binary students who are already vulnerable to bullying and harassment — especially when they are constantly misgendered.

It's probably worth pointing out that courts and federal law have consistently upheld that schools have a duty to protect students from bullying and create a safe learning environment for all, regardless of gender identity.

"Schools must grapple with their attorneys where student privacy rights end and parents’ rights to educational records begin. Generally, schools should use the student’s pronouns in all school-based communications, with the student’s consent. Schools are not obligated to notify parents of their child’s gender identity."

Ensure Your School Policies Protect Gender Diverse Students - Brooks & Pierce

Using a bit of the "common sense" referenced in the flyer, it seems to me that if a student wants to use different pronouns at school than at home, they likely have a very good reason.

The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization, released a report last month featuring data collected in 2022 from nearly 13,000 LGBTQ+ youth (age 13-18) across the country.

Some of the key findings noted:

• Almost half (46.1%) of LGBTQ+ youth, including over half (54.9%) of transgender and gender-expansive youth, feel unsafe in at least one school setting.
• Over half (55%) of LGBTQ+ youth, and 60% of transgender and gender-expansive youth, screened positive for depression.
• Two-thirds each of LGBTQ+ youth (63.5%), and transgender and gender-expansive youth (68.2%), screened positive for anxiety.
• Almost 6 in 10 (59.4%) LGBTQ+ youth—including 62.6% of transgender and gender-expansive youth—have been “teased, bullied, or treated badly” at school for at least one reason in the prior year.
• More than half each of LGBTQ+ youth (51.7%), and transgender and gender-expansive youth (55.6%) were victimized specifically due to their sexual identity, gender identity, and/or gender expression

While extremist organizations like Moms for Liberty claim to be "standing up for kids," they lack the self-awareness to know that their interpretation of "liberty" is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to impose their own hateful ideologies on the educational landscape by attacking LGBTQ+ students, marketing fear, and in the end, stripping others of the "liberty" they claim to revere.

It's election season again so a great time to point out that local elections matter.