Planned Persecution
NEA claims to be for religious freedom, but Catholics and other right-to-lifers need not apply.
“The National Education Association believes that freedom of religion is a fundamental human right. The Association also believes that choice of religion is an intensely personal decision.” These high-minded words are from NEA Resolution I-33, which was passed at its recent convention. Nothing really new here; the NEA passed other similar resolutions this year, and in fact it does so every year. There is also nothing new about the union’s raving hypocrisy on the issue.
As we learned recently via several secretly recorded videos, Planned Parenthood (PP) not only performs an ungodly number of abortions every year, but is in the dead baby body parts sales biz too. One would think that the unions, which have donated millions to PP over the years, might have shown some reticence. But they have doubled down instead. Over at AFL-CIO, Boss Trumka asserted that calls to defund PP “based on doctored undercover recordings are politically motivated and wrong.” Actually, he’s wrong. The videos weren’t “doctored” at all; they were available in their entirety on the internet. SEIU president Mary Kay Henry stood her ground and affirmed in a tweet, “Extremists stoop to new low attacking women & access to preventive care.” (Henry has a familial stake in this in that SEIU VP Kirk Adams is married to PP president Cecile Richards.)
In another case of defending evil, spreading falsehoods and/or selling ignorance, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten tweeted “More than 50% of Planned Parenthood patients are enrolled in Medicaid. Defunding @PPFA would take their coverage away. #StandWithPP” Wrong again. Defunding PP won’t take anyone’s Medicaid coverage away.
But for sheer misdirection nothing beats United Federation of Teachers president Michael Mulgrew who back in 2012 announced a $125,000 gift to PP. “As a union with a large female membership, we know the importance of the kind of health care that Planned Parenthood provides, including breast cancer screening.” Well, actually, despite what many think, PP does not perform mammograms or even possess the necessary equipment to do so. Its clinics do provide referrals, but the Susan G. Komen Foundation and the American Cancer Society readily provide them as well.
It’s important to note that UFT’s $125,000 gift (and all union largess) is comprised of dues money the union collects from its teachers regardless of their religious/moral convictions. So what can a pro-life teacher do knowing that part of his/her union dues is going to fund PP, one of whose raisons-d’être is killing (and now selling body parts of) the unborn? In non-right-to-work states, these teachers have two options. They can become agency fee payers in which case they must still pay for things like collective bargaining but don’t have to support the unions’ progressive political agenda. Or a teacher can become a religious objector and pay absolutely no money to the union, but instead pay a full dues share to a charity agreed on by the teachers union and the school district. This is a difficult status to achieve because the union just can’t bear to have what it considers a freeloader in its midst. As such, a dissenting teacher must usually seek out legal assistance and go to great lengths to prove their religiosity.
Enter Linda Misja, a high school language teacher in western Pennsylvania. Ms. Misja, a devout Roman Catholic, and her union, the Pennsylvania State Education Association (PSEA), just can’t seem to agree on a mutually acceptable charity. According to Watchdog.org’s Evan Grossman, Misja initially requested that her money to go to People Concerned for the Unborn Child, a pro-life group which is opposed to artificial contraception, in-vitro fertilization and birth control. The union, which either has a dark sense of humor or is seriously delusional, came back with an offer to send her dues money to an abortion clinic.
Misja countered with an alternative: a charity arm of the National Rifle Association which works with public schools to teach gun safety. But the union nixed this idea also on the grounds that it was “too political.” As Misja and the union duke it out, $2,000 she earned as a teacher is sitting in an escrow account.
What all this points to is that the teachers unions – PSEA is but one example – put their far left agenda above all else. The high-minded assertion about religious liberty in NEA Resolution I-33 is a canard. If the union really believed in religious freedom, it would direct PSEA, an NEA affiliate, to honor Misja’s request to have her money donated to an entity that supports her Catholic beliefs. And just as ridiculous is PSEA’s claim that donating to the NRA is “too political.” Since 1989, NEA has spent $92,972,656 on candidates, PACs, etc. while the American Federation of Teachers spent $69,757,113 during the same 26 year period. (In 2014 alone, PSEA spent $2,711,333 on politics) But Ms. Misja is laughably being denied the option to donate to the NRA because it’s “too political.”
Tolerance is a buzzword the teachers unions use with great abandon. But when it only goes one way, it becomes dictatorial, which is a perfect word to describe many teacher union policies.
Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues. The views presented here are strictly his own.