On Wednesday, for five minutes, the Republican Congresswoman from Georgia berated, demeaned, and bullied Weingarten -- and not just Weingarten but the LGBTQ community, and anyone who is adopted, anyone who has adopted a child, anyone who is a parent to a child but not by birth –not "biologically," the term Greene used – and anyone who is a child of a parent but not biologically.
Congresswoman Greene told Weingarten she is "not a mother" because she not the "biological" parent of her children.
It was a shocking claim that stunned many, but as NCRM reported, it was not the first time Greene has said that only biological parents are real parents.
“Miss Weingarten,” Rep. Greene asked Weingarten during the congressional hearing, “Are you a mother?”
“I am a mother by marriage,” Weingarten replied. “And my wife is here with me. So I’m really glad that she’s here.”
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“By marriage,” Greene noted. “I see.”
The ensuing five-minute Q&A consisted almost entirely of Greene berating Weingarten, as she did here:
Weingarten is not a government official and was not testifying under subpoena, so she conceivably could have walked out. But she stayed, and as she told MSNBC's Nicolle Wallace on Friday, "I felt like I was taking one for the team."
Greene attacked her for doing her job by sending the CDC recommendations on how to protect children (and by extension their families), teachers, and staff as the coronavirus pandemic took over the country and the world.
The extremist Georgia lawmaker concluded her remarks by telling Weingarten, “you have no business advising the CDC what the medical guidelines were for school closures, because now we have a nation of schoolchildren who suffered because of it. The problem is people like you need to admit that you’re just a political activist. Not a teacher, not a mother and not a medical doctor.”
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Note Greene's "people like you" and the "not a mother" remarks. To be clear, Marjorie Taylor Greene said Randi Weingarten is not a mother because she is merely married to her children's mother.
(Religion News Service's Jack Jenkins noted that Weingarten's wife is "Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, head of a prominent NYC synagogue long known for its support of LGBTQ rights.")
On Friday, Weingarten told Wallace and her MSNBC panel, "This can't just be political. It just can't be about what we do in November. I think that when we see people being treated so cruelly, and indecently people of different political factions have to come together, and it will have a lot of strength if we do. We can debate about issues. That's what school teachers do every day. You don't wait to say to a kid, 'Are you a Democrat? Are you a Republican? Are you an independent?'"
"Kids come to your classroom, you try to teach the whole child, you tried to help them thrive," she continued. "We need to call out the cruelty and call out the deprivation and the dehumanization."
Earlier in the segment Wallace blistered the right and the far-right, explaining that when they move to quickly dehumanize people, everyone needs to stop it in its tracks.
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"I do this without hyperbole but I want to say this clearly today," Wallace told her panel. "If we don't jump on and rapidly respond to dehumanization campaigns when they happen, they're achieving what the right needs them to achieve."
"Alex Jones couldn't have the dead babies at Sandy Hook exist, because then we might do something different about guns. Republicans can't have the moms of trans kids and dads just trying to figure out the best way to love and support their kids. They can't exist. Because if that mom is as compassionate and committed to her child or his child as they are, then they can't square their own hateful hearts and their intolerance."
"If the laws banning drag shows while they push for permitless carry happen at the same time, and they haven't dehumanized the part of the country that they don't agree with or approve of, then they can't push through their agendas. They rely on the dehumanization being allowed to slide. They need that and when we let it happen, we aid them."
