NEA Member Troubled by National Union's Liberal Political Activism
by Jim Brown
August 8, 2006
(AgapePress) - - An endorsement of same-sex "marriage" was not the only political statement that angered conservative members of the National Education Association (NEA) at the teachers union's convention last month in Orlando, Florida.
At that meeting, 50 NEA delegates submitted a legislative amendment (7) calling for an immigration policy that "rejects the criminalization of undocumented immigrants and those who work with them, especially educators." Amendment 7, which is now in the hands of the NEA's Legislative Committee, also advocates "a path to citizenship" or "permanent residency" for illegal aliens.
Ohio teacher Judy Bruns, an eight-year delegate to the national NEA convention, calls the proposed amendment "embarrassingly presumptuous." She believes this measure and others like it overstep the organization's proper scope and purpose.
"I feel that, in a number of cases, at least in recent years when I've been at the NEA assembly, that the union is getting involved in things that it shouldn't be involved in," Bruns says. And in so doing, she asserts, the powerful union seems to be "rather assuming more knowledge about such things than our national government."
The Ohio educator says she was also troubled to learn that another NEA amendment (B1) says early childhood education programs should include "diversity-based curricula" that are accepting of homosexuality. She feels homosexual activism has become a high priority for the union.
"The GLBT Caucus within the NEA is one of the most powerful caucuses within the NEA," Bruns observes. "The influence that the GLBT Caucus has had is just pervasive," she notes, "and GLBT wording and rights are just all over the place in our resolutions document."
At the union's 2006 annual convention in July, one of the year's NEA Human and Civil Rights Awards was given to Brian Guehring, who created the Pride Players Theater Group, a student drama group comprised of 100 homosexual and heterosexual students around Omaha, Nebraska.
Guehring was also honored for establishing 14 Gay-Straight Alliances in schools. And two years ago, the NEA gave the Human and Civil Rights Award to Kevin Jennings, founder of the homosexual activist group GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network.
Also, Bruns says Brent McKim, the co-chairman of the NEA's Resolutions Committee, told her that the national teachers union does not only support same-sex marriage in states where it is legal, but is also an advocate for legally married homosexuals who want to adopt, even if their state bans homosexual adoption.
Jim Brown, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
