The second lady is stepping back into the classroom. Vice President Mike Pence’s wife, Karen, will serve as a part-time art instructor at a Christian school in Springfield, Virginia.
Pence will teach art at Immanuel Christian School twice a week through May, according to a press release published Tuesday by the White House.
“I am excited to be back in the classroom and doing what I love to do, which is to teach art to elementary students,” the second lady said in a statement. “I have missed teaching art, and it’s great to return to the school where I taught art for twelve years.”
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Pence, 62, accepted the job in December, though she was already familiar with the school. She began teaching art at the nearby school in 2000, when her husband was serving in Congress, The Hill reported.
But her decision to return to the classroom didn’t engender a warm greeting from many on the left — including reporters — who immediately jumped to the fact that the Christian school holds to mainstream Christian doctrine regarding sexuality.
Karen Pence, the wife of the Vice President, is teaching at a school that discriminates against gay and trans people. And some of you self-hating and opportunistic LGBTQ people (you know exactly who you are) are still out there defending this presidency. https://t.co/JEdnaekI7H
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) January 16, 2019
So, lemme get this straight, the second lady of the United States has chosen to work at a school that openly discriminates against LGBT adults and children. https://t.co/A4lxOv7V8G
— Kate Bennett (@KateBennett_DC) January 16, 2019
Both The Huffington Post and The Washington Post published stories critical of Pence for returning to a school that holds to a traditional view of marriage and sex.
From the school’s employment application:
Moral misconduct which violates the bona fide occupational qualifications for employees includes, but is not limited to, such behaviors as the following: heterosexual activity outside of marriage (e.g., premarital sex, cohabitation, extramarital sex), homosexual or lesbian sexual activity, polygamy, transgender identity, any other violation of the unique roles of male and female, sexual harassment, use or viewing of pornographic material or websites.
Responding to the nonsensical outrage over the religious school’s doctrinal perspective, Andrew Walker, a senior fellow in ethics for the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said the mainstream coverage of Pence’s return to the classroom “is a great example for why media distrust is a real thing.”
https://twitter.com/andrewtwalk/status/1085520893407825921
Pence’s spokeswoman, Kara Brooks, told CNN it’s “absurd” the second lady is taking flack for choosing to teach students part-time at a local Christian school.
“It’s absurd that her decision to teach art to children at a Christian school, and the school’s religious beliefs, are under attack,” she said.
Pence, it should be noted, is not the first second lady to return to the classroom. Former second lady Jill Biden, taught English at Northern Virginia Community College while her husband, former Vice President Joe Biden, was in office.