twincities.com

A national civil rights organization has named an Anoka-Hennepin school district parents’ group critical of gay and lesbian lifestyles as a hate group.

The Parents Action League joined the Ku Klos Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the American Aryan Reich and Bare Naked Islam as some of the latest organizations to make the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual list.

The list was released a week after the center settled two anti-gay bullying lawsuits filed against the Anoka-Hennepin district. The Parents Action League has been the most vocal critic of the aims of the Alabama-based civil rights organization.

In an email seeking comment on the listing, the president of the parents’ group called its inclusion “a privilege.”

“It is a privilege to be added to the long list of pro-family organizations that have been labeled as ‘hate groups,’â ” Laurie Thompson said. “The SPLC continues their strategy of defaming and name calling toward those whom they disagree with.”

The group was listed for the way it defames and demonizes gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, said Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s quarterly Intelligence Project.

Specifically, Beirich said the group advocates resources and ideas that claim “homosexuals are promiscuous, dysfunctional, unhealthy and harmful to public health.

“In other words, this group is putting out ugly propaganda about this population,” she said.

She said the center spent months

studying the behavior of the group before adding it to the list.

Thompson said the listing was simply “name calling towards those (with) whom they disagree.”

“If anything, the SPLC should be listed first on their own national ‘hate group’ list,’â ” Thompson said in the email.