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Unmarried pregnant women shouldn’t teach in schools

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Women’s rights groups, LGBT organisations and teaching unions in the US are coming out in force against Senator Jim DeMint, who said recently that openly gay people and unmarried pregnant women should be banned from teaching in state schools.

At an event in South Carolina last week, DeMint reiterated the controversial convictions he first made public in 2004.

“(When I said those things,) no one came to my defense,” DeMint said on Friday. “But everyone would come to me and whisper that I shouldn’t back down. They don’t want government purging their rights and their freedom to religion.”

But teaching unions have blasted his comments. National Education Association (NEA) Government Relations Director Kim Anderson said: “This is one of the reasons why the NEA has fought for civil and human rights ever since its conception 157 years ago, and we want qualified people in the classroom, and it doesn’t matter whether they’re married or what their sexual orientation is.”

Randi Weingarten, head of American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and an openly gay woman, added: “On a personal level, as a gay woman, I am very disappointed that a senator would place more emphasis on who we are as human beings than on what we do as professionals.”

Read the full story at the Huffington Post.

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