Teachers’ Union Dues Support Gay Groups

America’s biggest and most powerful teachers’ union promotes homosexuality and financially supports homosexual activist groups.

The National Education Association (NEA)—with 3.2 million members, 50 state associations, and more than 14,000 local affiliates—dominates public education in America. The source of its strength is membership dues, which last year totaled over $298 million.

The teachers’ union in 2006 spent more than $26 million on political activities and lobbying, and paid out almost $74 million in “contributions, gifts, and grants,” many of those to far-left political organizations, including well-known gay militant groups.

Many Christians teach in public schools and pay union dues that help fund activities inimical to the mission of the church. Millions more Christians send their children to NEA-staffed schools and support those schools with their taxes.

It’s time Christian teachers and parents knew what they’re getting for their money.

Official Numbers

“Teachers paying dues have no idea what their dues are being used for,” said Diane Gramley of the American Family Association of Pennsylvania.

The NEA recently held its annual convention in Philadelphia. As it closed, Ms. Gramley raised a stir by saying that the union had made financial grants to gay militant groups—$5,000 to the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), $5,000 to the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), and $30,000 to the Human Rights Campaign.

The NEA has consistently denied that it “encourages curriculum that promotes homosexuality” (http://www.nea.org/topics/truth.html); but it does support and promote homosexuality, as proved by financial information provided by the NEA itself.

Ms. Gramley got her information from the Education Intelligence Agency, directed by Mike Antonucci. Antonucci took the information from the NEA’s financial disclosure statement submitted, as required by law, to the U.S. Department of Labor.

Directly accessing the information on the government website requires a little extra work and a lot of reading (“The Labor Department website isn’t very user-friendly,” Antonucci said), but it can be done. Antonucci explained how:

1. Go to the Department of Labor website.

2. In the box next to “File Number,” type in 000-342.

3. Click the “Submit” button.

4. On the next page to come up, under the heading “Fiscal Year,” click on “2006 report.”

This will give the user access to the NEA’s official disclosure statement, a very long document. But those who question the accuracy of Antonucci’s figures will find everything he says confirmed here. It is important that the reader understand that this is factual information, not allegations.

For a much easier read, see Antonucci’s report at http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20061204.htm.

The Horn of Plenty

The NEA gives grants to many well-known radical political organizations.

These include Amnesty International ($5,000), the Center for Women Policy Studies ($5,000), the National Council of La Raza ($8,000), People For the American Way ($160,805), and the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition ($5,000), among others. The union also made grants to two Democratic Party organizations, Democratic GAIN ($10,900) and the Democratic Leadership Council ($25,000), and one liberal Republican group, the Ripon Society ($12,500).

Antonucci has compiled a list of 94 advocacy groups that last year received money from the NEA—a total of $4.7 million. His list (see http://www.eiaonline.com/archives/20061204.htm) also provides a link to each group’s home page, so that the reader can see what each group advocates. He will see a great deal of socialism, racial politics, feminism, and sexual “liberation.”

But the NEA’s support for organized sodomy doesn’t stop with grants to militant groups. This spring, for example, Diane Gramley pointed out, the NEA hosted a “GenderYOUTH Conference” in Washington, D.C. The conference featured a “Gay Youth Leadership Summit.” The web page proclaims, “Hosted by the National Education Association” (http://www.genderyouth.org/newsletter).

Sodomy in the Schools

The NEA Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Caucus is an influential group within the union. During the NEA convention this year, the caucus held a reception at “one of the oldest Gay bars in the country … in the heart of Philadelphia’s ‘Gayborhood,’” as described on the group’s website (http://www.nea-glbtc.org/agenda.html).

Of course, the union denies that it would “encourage schools to teach students to become gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered,” but only tries to “raise awareness of homophobia” (http://www.nea.org/topics/truth.html).

Such statements cannot be sustained, in light of the union’s financial support of homosexual activist groups, its sponsorship of homosexual activist events, and the presence of a powerful homosexual activist contingent within its ranks.

But the money actually donated to gay militant groups is only the tip of the iceberg. “Teaching materials”—most infamously, a “Little Black Book” instructing students in gay sexual techniques and offering a list of gay bars where teens could pick up adult sex partners—provided by gay groups regularly find their way into the classroom. So do members of these groups. GLSEN, with the cooperation of school authorities, has set up “gay-straight alliances” in thousands of public schools across the country.

Here at Chalcedon we have reported numerous instances of the progress of the homosexual agenda through NEA-dominated public schools. A few recent examples:

*“Youth Pride Day” Celebrates Abomination

*New Laws Set to Turn California Schools into Gay Indoctrination Centers

*Losing Massachusetts

*ATTENTION CHRISTIANS! Educators Use ‘Little Black Book’ to Push Gay Sex

Many groups have reported on the public schools’ tireless promotion of homosexuality—Mission America, Focus on the Family, the American Family Association, Parents and Friends of ExGays and Gays, and dozens more. Houston attorney Bruce Shortt has written a book, The Harsh Truth About Public Schools (Vallecito, CA: Chalcedon, 2004), whose chapter on the schools’ promotion of sexual anarchy is backed up by 224 separate footnotes.

The evidence is more than abundant; it is overwhelming. The NEA supports homosexual activism and brings it into the classroom; and the NEA is supported by membership dues and school taxes.

“There is no easy way out,” R. J. Rushdoony writes, “but there is a good way, a godly way, the way of obedience to God’s law …

“Before we can have a godly society, we will have to pay Caesar his price while we are also paying for Christian schools … All this double taxation will cost us a great deal, but the alternative will cost us more …

“The tithe is the a,b,c’s of godly reconstruction, the alpha and the omega of a Christian society … Thus, in obedience to the Lord (Rom. 13:5­–7), we pay our taxes, although that tax money is used to undermine all that we believe in. Again, in obedience to the Lord, we pay our tithes. In time, the effect of the tithe will be to undermine and destroy the statist world and its taxation. It will create a godly society in the only way it can be created, in God’s appointed way.”^[1]

Abuses like those perpetrated by the NEA cannot be corrected except by hard work and sacrifice. Christian schools need to be built; Christian families who prefer to homeschool need to be equipped for it; and Christian children need to be removed from public schools. For some families the sacrifice will be more than they expect; for others, less. The short-term solutions are homeschooling and the existing Christian schools. The long-term solution is to establish a Christian education network that will meet the needs of millions of Christian families—a solution to which tithes paid to churches will be indispensable.

The alternative is to continue to allow Christian children to be educated by the NEA, an organization evidently committed to the overthrow of Christian moral teachings.

Those who decide they must live with that alternative ought at least to know the facts.