Climate change

Gruenhagen has called climate change "a complete United Nations fraud and lie" and claimed that those who believe in it believe that exhalation causes global warming.^[5] In a January 2021 committee hearing, he said that 97% of scientists believe in climate change only because of "lies and indoctrination".^[6] A few months later, he attempted to amend a large House climate and energy bill to redefine wind power and solar power as "dirty, inefficient and expensive".^[7]

Homosexuality and same-sex marriage

Gruenhagen believes homosexuality is "unhealthy" and an "addiction".^[8] On March 11, 2013, a day before Minnesota state legislative committees were set to hold a public hearing on a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in the state, he raised a point of personal privilege on the House floor. He then introduced Kevin Petersen, who Gruenhagen claimed was a friend who had "left the gay lifestyle" after ten years, entered a heterosexual marriage and fathered three children.^[8][9] An activist, Petersen served with Gruenhagen as a member of the Pro-Marriage Amendment Forum, a group advocating for a constitutional amendment in Minnesota to prohibit same-sex marriage.^[8][10]

In March 2022, Gruenhagen opposed a bill banning conversion therapy, expressing his preference that the practice be called "reparative therapy" and remain accessible in Minnesota.^[11]

2020 election denial

Following the 2020 United States and Minnesota state election cycles, Gruenhagen was rebuked by the Minnesota Secretary of State when he claimed that a large number of absentee ballots in the 2020 election were not connected to registered voters and called for a forensic audit of the state election.^[12] Gruenhagen and several other Minnesota state lawmakers then attended the "Storm the Capital" rally in St. Paul on January 6, 2021, and were later investigated for their participation in the event.^[13]

Opposition to vaccine mandates

On January 5, 2023, Gruenhagen and other Republican state lawmakers spoke at a rally opposing the COVID-19 vaccine and workplace mandates requiring employees to receive it.^[14] Gruenhagen had previously spoken in support of a bill that would have banned COVID-19 vaccine mandates, required the state to create a "vaccine bill of rights", and set additional requirements regarding the sources of vaccine information medical providers give patients.^[15]

Senate File 517

Later that month, Gruenhagen introduced Senate File 517, a bill that would require school districts to "provide instruction to students in grades 9 to 12 exploring the contrast between the scientific facts on how sickness, disease, pain, suffering, and death relate to the existence of complex living organisms, and how sickness, disease, pain, suffering, and death are a consequence imposed by the Creator of complex living organisms."^[16]