Jennings Does Not Get a Pass on FISTGATE

The folks at Media Matters are trying to give Kevin Jennings a pass on the 2000 GLSEN sponsored conference where "fisting kits" were distributed to teens and the rules for "spitting versus swallowing" were discussed, among other titillating subjects.

Jim Hoft points out that this conference was "sponsored by the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) [and] was fully supported by the Massachusetts Department of Education, the Safe Schools Program, the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth...".

According to Media Matters, Jennings knew nothing about the content of that conference, even though he didn't resign his post as Executive Director of GLSEN until 2008.

The "sexuality instructor" of that conference was Margot Abels, an employee of the Massachusettes Department of Public Health. Jennings's defenders contend that Jennings was blissfully unaware of the work of Ms. Abels - yet allowed her to speak to teens at this conference anyway:

But the statements MassResistance cites Abels reportedly making only indicate that her immediate supervisors in the Department of Education were aware of her work - not Jennings or other GLSEN officials.

We're to believe that GLSEN sponsored a conference and allowed Ms. Abels to conduct a sexuality seminar, yet they were unware of her work?

Jennings did not resign his post as Executive Director of GLSEN until 2008, which, to me, makes him responsible. The buck stops here.

If he didn't know, he should have. To allow someone to speak to teenagers about sexuality and not check out their background or positions on such subjects is nothing short of irresponsible. As a teacher, I would never allow anyone into my classroom to speak to students without checking out what they were going to say and what their positions might be on such sensitive topics.

And even if you DO want to give Jennings a pass on that - the reading materials recommended for school kids on the GLSEN site were pornographic before Jennings stepped down in 2008, and they still are.

No pass for Jennings on this one.

Email: Kevin.Jennings@ed.gov

Email: Arne.Duncan@ed.gov

The Kevin Jennings FISTGATE Story Hits the Media

Michelle Malkin was on Hannity last night to talk about Kevin Jennings and his advocating porn as safe-reading for school children. I'm encouraged that this story is getting out into the main media now and not restricted to conservative blogs. The Washington Times had an editorial about it yesterday which you can read here. There is also a report that Congressman Burgess has written to Obama calling for him to remove Jennings from his job.



Keep up the pressure. This man is not appropriate for this job. Michelle Malkin has contact information for the corporations that support GLSEN, the organization founded by Jennings and which advocates this "safe-school" pornography, including news that GLSEN distributed a guide to "black-leather bars" to teens during one GLSEN conference.

Email: Kevin.Jennings@ed.gov

Email: Arne.Duncan@ed.gov

Obama's Safe Schools Czar Promotes Porn in Schools

Surely by now you've heard of the Kevin Jennings brouhaha. I've blogged about him before, several times, starting in September. Pamela Gellar wrote about him before that, in June. Gateway Pundit has been all over the Jennings story this week.

Michelle Malkin has been on the case, too, and yesterday she posted a list of companies and corporations that sponsor, or fund, GLSEN. That's the organization that Jennings founded.

Today, Malkin posts a response she received from Kodak, one of the sponsors, and they, of course, stand by their support.

This is just beyond me. I don't understand a world where the kind of rot that Jennings and GLSEN advocate as appropriate reading for our school children is acceptable. I looked at some of the things that Jim Hoft posted from the GLSEN reading list. Quite honestly, I think if I tried to put some of this mess in my classroom, I'd be fired. On the spot.

In a day and age where teachers are fired from their jobs for sending text messages to students, how does this guy get the job assignment of keeping America's schools safe?

I'd be interested in knowing how many American schools actually use this reading list. I'd be interested in knowing how many schools actually have Queer 13, for example, in their libraries or classrooms.

Teachers in my district are inserviced and have to sign a document stating that they understand what inappropriate contact (including correspondence) is and that we will not participate in such conduct. There is absolutely no doubt that at least some of the items on the GLSEN reading list are pornographic. It's not about tolerance; I mean, some of the books may be. And Tango Makes Three is about homosexual penguins (recommended for grades K-6), and I guess that's about "tolerance." But there are many books on the reading list that are just simply pornographic.

I'm not even going to quote from the books, but you can go here and look at page 44 of Queer 13 and you tell me if that's about tolerance, or if it's porn. It's recommended for grades 7-12.

That's not the only offensive book on the GLSEN reading list. Gateway Pundit has a whole string of them.

And so what it comes down to is that our safe schools czar is promoting, or at least during his tenure at GLSEN, promoted porn.

What in the world will it take for American parents to get angry about this guy and demand his resignation? He has become the poster child for home schooling. As a public school teacher I've never been a rabid advocate for home schooling, even though I've never opposed it either; I see advantages to both, and your choice depends on a number of factors. But if Kevin Jennings is the final word in what is "safe" for our schools, and in developing the tolerance curriculum in our schools, I'd say get the heck out of there.

Email: Kevin.Jennings@ed.gov

Email: Arne.Duncan@ed.gov

Why Does Kevin Jennings Still Have a Job?

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit is all OVER Kevin Jennings this week. I'm glad to see it. I posted on Jennings here, here, and here, among others, as has Michelle Malkin and other bloggers.

The fact that Jennings still has a job, that the taxpayers are still paying his salary, is mind boggling.

Irony

Isn't it a clue that there is something just too unsuitable about the safe schools czar, Kevin Jennings, when you aren't even comfortable blogging about his patronage of the arts because people at the school where you work may stumble across it and deem it inappropriate?

Those links, by the way, are the clean ones. I'm not even linking to the site with pictures. I like my job.

Irony.

Kevin Jennings, Harry Hay, and Safe Schools

I started working on this Kevin Jennings post last weekend, never finished it, and forgot about it until Jennings was all over Memeorandum again today. A really good journalist wouldn't have have been so lackadaisical with posting, but that's why some of them get their tip jars rung more often than the rest of us.

At any rate, I noted the Rachel Abrams post at The Weekly Standard, looking at the Jennings perception of what safe schools means today. Back when we were kids, or at least I was, being safe in school meant not running in the halls or as Abrams says, "eating the paste."

Times are changin'.

You will remember, of course, that Jennings is the safe schools czar who has come under fire for failing to report knowledge of a male underage high school student having sex with an older man whom he met in a bus station. It has since been determined that that young man in question was in fact of legal consent, and he has come out in praise and gratitude of the support Jennings offered him. For his part, Jennings attributes this lapse to a youthful mistake and apologized, only after coming under fire by conservatives.

What Abrams is looking at now is Harry Hay and Jennings's praise of him. Michelle Malkin is now posting on the same subject, pointing to Zombie's post about Harry Hay. So this is gaining a little traction.

Who is Harry Hay? He was a Communist, he was co-founder of the Mattachine Society, which was one of the first gay activist organizations in the U.S., and was deeply involved with the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). We'll get back to him.

Kevin Jennings penned the Foreward in the book Queering Elementary Education and in it he actually says something I agree with. He says "Let's start setting the expectation that you must value every human being as a precious gift, that you must respect even those you disagree with, that you must treasure the differences among us, as soon as possible." On this point Mr. Jennings and I are in agreement, however, I don't think it's his call as to when or how a child learns about homosexuality, or his place as czar to tell them.

Full disclosure: Before anyone jumps me for being anti-gay, let me just say that nothing could be further from the truth. I'm not going to go into the long list of friends I have (and some that I have tragically lost) who are gay. My levels of tolerance might surprise you. This is not my issue with Jennings. I question his methods, his timing, and his role in that part of a child's education. I question his decision making; his handling of the sexual activity of a child, of legal consent or not, with an older man was wrong.

Jennings is the safe schools czar. As Abrams points out, safe schools used to include drug education, anti-violence and even increasing our awareness of bullying, but Jennings says "we must address anti-gay bigotry and we must do it as soon as students start going to school." Really? We have to address this in kindergarten?

That is simply not the role of government. You know, when Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was exposed and pundits all over the television were talking about it, suddenly parents found themselves in the awkward role of having to explain to very young children what oral sex is. The President of the United States dropped that bomb in their laps and parents had to negotiate the landmines of adultery and mature sexual content with kids that were too young to have to think about such things.

Jennings's philosophy is not unlike that in principle. It should be the role of the parents to decide what to say to kids, and when to say it, on such mature topics. Whether those parents agree with Jennings or not, it's their own call.

Now, back to Harry Hay. One other disturbing thing that Rachel Abrams, and now Zombie, points to is Jennings's outspoken admiration of Harry Hay who spoke out in favor of man/boy love. Hay's quote on the subject asserts that the best thing that could happen to a young, gay boy is to hook up with an older man. He said, ". . . if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need.”

To be fair, when Jennings praised Hay, he wasn't necessarily praising NAMBLA, but he was praising Hay and for him to express such admiration of a man that spoke so highly of pedophilia is in fact disturbing. NAMBLA advocates the liberalization of laws against sexual relations between adult men and underage boys. Zombie is more to the point: "It's a pro-pedophilia group."

Zombie has all the evidence of Hay's deep involvement with NAMBLA. There's no proof that Jennings ever met Hay or associated with him, and it's all guilt by association. But how much does that matter when you're talking about the man in charge of your child's safety at school expressing admiration for a man who is pro-pedophilia?



More links:
American Spectator on Nancy Pelosi's silence on Jennings
Dan Riehl standing by his position that Jennings is fine with child/adult sex
Memeorandum
A video on Jennings by Newsy.com

Is the Kevin Jennings Apology Enough?

Kevin Jennings has apologized for failing to report pedophilia to the authorities when a high school sophomore revealed that he was having an affair with an older man that he met in a bus station. Jennings told the boy, "I hope you knew to use a condom!" Jennings says now that he should have reported the incident.

It does not go without notice here, however, that Jennings only apologizes when he gets called out on the matter. He wrote about it in his memoir in 2007 and expressed no regret then. He spoke of it in a speech in 2000 and expressed no regret then, either.

Jennings, to date, has not expressed regret over his previous drug use or retreated on his seeming advocacy of such behavior. In his memoir he wrote of the hazy days of his youth when says, "I got stoned more often and went out to the beach at Bellows, overlooking Honolulu Harbor and the lights of the city, to drink with my buddies on Friday and Saturday nights, spending hours watching the planes take off and land at the airport, which is actually quite fascinating when you are drunk and stoned."

This statement wouldn't encourage some misguided youth to go do this himself? It's "quite fascinating!"

For their part, Team Obama stands behind Jennings. Vetting be damned. We don't care about his past!

Erick Erickson suggests that "At some point we must stop saying that there was a failure to vet these people and conclude that Barack Obama has no more of a problem with men like Kevin Jennings who encourage statutory rape than men like Bill Ayers who encourages cop killing."

I'd agree that there's a real pattern here. Add Van Jones to the mix, drag Jeremiah Wright back out and every other radical that Obama has had dealings with and the pattern is clear; Erickson is correct. Obama has no problem with radicals and extremists. This isn't a vetting problem, it's an attitude problem.

Longer School Days and Weekends, Too!

American children don't spend enough time in school, according to Team Obama. In fact, schools need to stay open late and on the weekend to accomodate (babysit?) kids.

Via Fox News:

The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.

"Our school calendar is based upon the agrarian economy and not too many of our kids are working the fields today," Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

What about time with family? What about kids with jobs? Kids with extra-curricular activities? Kids who are just simply overscheduled? What about the increasing teacher shortage - will a longer school day and weekends help that?

Fox has the stats on the school day around the world:

Kids in the U.S. spend more hours in school (1,146 instructional hours per year) than do kids in the Asian countries that persistently outscore the U.S. on math and science tests -- Singapore (903), Taiwan (1,050), Japan (1,005) and Hong Kong (1,013). That is despite the fact that Taiwan, Japan and Hong Kong have longer school years (190 to 201 days) than does the U.S. (180 days).

The administration makes the argument that disadvantaged kids lose time in the summer; they don't accomplish anything. Extreme poverty contributes to hunger which keeps them from learning. If they are at school, they can eat and they can learn.

Disadvantaged kids, on the whole, make no progress in the summer, [Karl] Alexander said. Some studies suggest they actually fall back. Wealthier kids have parents who read to them, have strong language skills and go to great lengths to give them learning opportunities such as computers, summer camp, vacations, music lessons, or playing on sports teams.

Let me suggest that you don't have to be wealthy to be accomplished. Doesn't Obama himself tell the story (often) of how disadvantaged he was when he was growing up and how the dedication of his mother contributed to his success? The whole overcoming adversity thing?

No, I'm not convinced that a longer school day is the answer. I believe more parental involvement is the key. Foster a mentor program for kids that don't have strong parental support, if that's the problem. Tutoring programs. There are already tons of after-school programs for disadvantaged children.

And, "let me be clear", as long as the administration embraces people like Kevin Jennings to lead our educational system, I'm not buyin' what they're sellin'.

A Closer Look at Kevin Jennings

I posted briefly yesterday on Kevin Jennings, the "safe schools czar," but let's take a little closer look at the man whose official title is Director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

Fox News posted an article on Jennings yesterday which outlines most of his biographical information. In 1990, while Jennings was a teacher in Massachusetts he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) which is now in over 40 schools.

The post Jennings now holds was created by Bush in 2002. The website of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools describes their mission as providing "financial assistance for drug and violence prevention activities and activities that promote the health and well being of students in elementary and secondary schools, and institutions of higher education" as well as formulation and development of policy relating to school violence and drug prevention. Sounds fair enough - schools should be drug and violence free.

William Jasper, writing for The New American, posted an article on September 11 about Jennings in which he contends that Jennings has an agenda to promote homosexuality in schools "under the guise of promoting 'safe schools.'" Jennings is a "bullying expert" and has fought against bullying in schools, which is certainly to be admired. No child should be bullied in school for any reason whatsoever.

However, to some, the Jennings agenda goes too far. If Van Jones was too controversial and radical in his beliefs to be considered suitable, well, let's just say that Kevin Jennings almost makes Van Jones look mainstream.

Jennings has made clear his intent to transform society through the schools. In March 2000, Jennings gave a speech to a church audience in New York City in which he addressed how to deal with religious conservatives. He said,

"Twenty percent of people are hard-core fair-minded [pro-homosexual] people. Twenty percent are hard-core [anti-homosexual] bigots. We need to ignore the hard-core bigots, get more of the hard-core fair-minded people to speak up, and we'll pull that 60 percent [of people in the middle] … over to our side. That's really what I think our strategy has to be. We have to quit being afraid of the religious right. We also have to quit — … I'm trying to find a way to say this. I'm trying not to say, '[F---] 'em!' which is what I want to say, because I don't care what they think! [audience laughter] Drop dead!"

That's the guy in charge of teaching tolerance speaking. He now, of course, denies ever saying that and says he has no recollection of saying that at all. Americans For Truth is searching their archives for a tape of the speech.

Jennings has been outspoken about his agenda to make homosexuality mainstream and acceptable to school children. As an adult, one gets to make up one's own mind; children are the responsibility of the parent and the parent's moral or religious beliefs should not be challenged in schools. It's not the job of public schools to override the parent. In October 1997, Jennings said this:

I'd like five years from now for most Americans when they hear the word GLSEN to think, "Ooh, that's good for kids." … Sane people keep the world the same [sh---y] old way it is now. It's the [crazy] people who think, "No, I can envision a day when straight people say, 'So what if you're promoting homosexuality?' or [when] straight kids say, 'Hey, why don't you and your boyfriend come over before you go to the prom and try your tuxes on at my house?'" … [I]f we believe that can happen, we can make it happen. The only thing that will stop us is our lack of faith that we can make it happen. That is our mission from this day forward.

Jennings has also come under fire for his failure to report an incident when he was a teacher in 1994; a high school sophomore informed Jennings that he was "involved" with "an older man" that he had met in a bus station bathroom. Jennings reports that he told the student "You know, I hope you knew to use a condom." The audio link of this conversation is here; Jennings shared this information at a speech in 2000 in Iowa.

Did Jennings have an obligation to report this incident? Legally, of course he did. Did he do so? No. The Fox article reports that The Washington Times found that no report was filed.

Jennings has been forthcoming about his own drug use. In his 2007 autobiography he wrote, ""I got stoned more often and went out to the beach at Bellows, overlooking Honolulu Harbor and the lights of the city, to drink with my buddies on Friday and Saturday nights, spending hours watching the planes take off and land at the airport, which is actually quite fascinating when you are drunk and stoned."

Mr. Jennings has never, that I can find, expressed regret about his past experience with drugs; in fact, the quote seems to celebrate such activity. Again, a personal choice for him, but is that the right man for the Drug Free Schools job?

In his 2002 book, Always My Child, Jennings proposes "a diversity policy that mandates including LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] themes in the curriculum." Is that the new direction of our education curriculum? If so, I suspect home-schooling will increase exponentially. That's just not the role for schools.

Jennings is just one more bizarre czar working for Team Obama. If this were a position that had to undergo proper vetting and confirmation, I doubt he would have made the cut. He's probably perfectly acceptable and accomplished in his field of study and authorship (he's published six books), but he's the wrong man to lead the charge for safety in our schools.

Kevin Jennings: A Very Bizarre Czar

How many creepy czars can really be uncovered in the Obama White House? It's like a bizarre scavenger hunt. First Van Jones and now Kevin Jennings. Who is Kevin Jennings? He's the Safe Schools Czar.

Read the Fox article here for the run down.

Jennings is a piece of work. No doubt. Pamela Gellar blogged about him back in June. He's only now starting to catch a bit of attention.

The New American has an article on him in which they wrote the following:

Jennings is given to spouting foul language when speechifying about the opposition. He also admits to using deception when pushing a subversive agenda that would be rigorously opposed by the vast majority of Americans if honestly promoted under its true colors. What is Jennings agenda? Promoting homosexuality (in all its various permutations) under the guise of promoting "safe schools." Jennings, whose official title is the Assistant Deputy Secretary for Safe and Drug Free Schools is a career homosexual activist who founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) and served as executive director for 14 years, until October 2008. For the past nearly two decades he has been a leading change agent for the cause of "queering" the nation's K-12 curriculum, and is largely responsible for instituting annual pro-homosexual propaganda programs such as the "Day of Silence" and "No Name-Calling Week" in hundreds of schools. (In using the term "queering," we are not disparaging or name-calling, but merely using a term adopted by Jennings and GLSEN & Company — when speaking amongst themselves, that is — to refer to their process of transforming society through the schools. Jennings wrote the foreword to Queering Elementary Education, an anthology by leading homosexual "educators.")

I've got more coming on Jennings but have to get back to the school now for more Homecoming decorating business. Go read up and I'll be back later!