Tea Party leader and American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) member Cindy Pugh has authored a "parental rights" bill (HF3174) that's an ALEC model constitutional amendment repackaged to be a law.
In a report about parental rights legislation, Liberal group People for the American Way calls similar efforts "the Trojan horse" of the religious right's attack on public education. The report outlines the national, grasstops origins of the language in the bill:
Proponents of parental rights initiatives claim to be responding to a grassroots movement, but there is little concrete evidence that the push for parental rights legislation is anything more than a "top-down" political strategy executed by national right-wing groups. In fact, the push for parental rights in state legislatures and in Congress is led by two national organizations: Of The People and the American Legislative Exchange Council. For example, in Colorado, 97 percent of the money raised to put a parental rights initiative on the ballot this November came from the Virginia-based group Of The People.2Other than these two organizations, the vast majority of the bill's support seems to come from national Religious Right political groups.
The most visible organization in the effort is Of The People (OTP), a relatively new national, single-issue group based in Arlington, Virginia, and founded in 1993 specifically to promote the Parental Rights Amendment (PRA).3 The group's stated goal is to amend all 50 state constitutions to include the PRA language.4 The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a national network of conservative state legislators that provides white papers and model legislation for its members. According to the president of OTP, the introduction of parental rights amendments in 28 states is the direct result of its collaboration with ALEC.5
While OTP and ALEC have provided the mechanism for distributing the model legislation to the various states, the passion driving the bills has come from a collection of Religious Right organizations, who see in PRA an opportunity to further their ongoing assault on public education. The Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Citizens for Excellence in Education, Home School Legal Defense Association, Eagle Forum, Traditional Values Coalition, National Center for Home Education, American Center for Law and Justice, Rutherford Institute and a number of state-based home schooling and Christian school groups have formed a coalition to support the bill at the federal level.6 In their action alerts, memos, newsletters, direct mail articles and television and radio broadcasts, Religious Rights groups have been energetically pushing parental rights initiatives on the state and local level as well.
The PRA is a natural extension of the Religious Right's long-standing campaign against public schools. Over the years, various elements of the movement have worked to censor books from school classrooms, to inject sectarian activity into the schools, to divert taxpayers' dollars from public education to private, sectarian schools and more. PRA, its pro-parent patina notwithstanding, would advance the Religious Right's platform across the board.
In addition to Pugh, other ALEC members in the Minnesota House co-authoring the bill include Sondra Erickson, Marty Seifert's running mate Pam Myhra and Linda Runbeck. ALEC EXposed's list of Minnesota members is found here.
Photo: Cindy Pugh, R-Chanhassen.
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