Warning: You May Want to Shower

posted at 10:47 pm on October 7, 2009 by J.E. Dyer
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…after reading this

I’ve been engaging in selective non-listening as the brouhaha grows about Kevin Jennings, President Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar.”  It’s a defensive reaction, I think.  You simply can’t be worried and indignant about everything.

Today, however, I heard “Kevin Jennings” and “NAMBLA” discussed together, with the implication that there is a connection, and I had to give up and pay attention.  Oy to the veh, this Obama presidency will wear a feller out.

Not having caught exactly what the deal was with “Jennings” and “NAMBLA,” I went into my online research with the expectation of finding that Jennings had not actually been a member of NAMBLA (the North American Man-Boy Love Association, which promotes pederasty).  I believe such individuals are still watched closely by the FBI.  Although I am happy to report that my expectation was fulfilled – there’s no evidence Jennings has ever been a member of NAMBLA – it turns out to be true that Jennings praised a long-time supporter of NAMBLA during a conference speech in 1997.  It also turns out to be true that this, along with other information, sheds significant and informative light on Mr. Jennings.

Jennings founded the Gay-Lesbian Straight Education Network, GLSEN, in 1990.  He has been active ever since in the movement to incorporate instruction about homosexuality in K-12 education.  He edited the 1994 book Becoming Visible:  A Reader in Gay and Lesbian History for High School and College Students, and wrote the forward to Q***ring Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue About Sexualities and Schooling.  As the WorldNet piece reveals (by direct quotation, so be warned), the latter work apparently dispenses with any coy film of outdated prudery, and gets right down to the ins and outs of sexualizing seven-year-olds.  It’s obligatory in right-wing commentary to note that Bill Ayers provided a jacket endorsement for this book, so, there it is.

Lori Roman at Regular Folks United has a link-packed piece on this.  The Minority Report and Gateway Pundit have also posted useful items.  It’s in the context of his long association with the agenda of bringing homosexuality to the K-12 curriculum that Jennings’ laudatory remarks about Harry Hay, a really long-time gay activist, must be viewed.  At a GLSEN conference in 1997, Jennings – GLSEN’s founder and leading light – devoted a long paragraph in a speech to praising Harry Hay, whom he described as “one of the people that’s [sic] always inspired me.”  The transcript of the speech is here.  Harry Hay (see his Wikipedia entry) had a long and checkered history as a gay activist, having founded his first group in 1948.  In his later years, as the Wikipedia bio demurely notes, he began to insist on the right of NAMBLA (which advocates felonious sexual assault on minor children) to march in gay pride parades.  Lori Roman’s link to the NAMBLA site, meanwhile, shows a list of Hay’s collected writings in explicit support of NAMBLA and “Man-Boy Love.”  The exculpatory theme emerging on the left, that Hay wasn’t a member of NAMBLA either, and that Jennings’ praise of him in 1997 was not in the context of NAMBLA’s peculiar portfolio, is inane and properly dismissed.  There’s beef in this burger.

Hard as it may be to believe, I wouldn’t even have to know about the indirect NAMBLA thread to find Jennings’ background wholly inappropriate to the Orwellian position of “Safe Schools Czar.”  That’s just the reference that persuaded me to pay attention.  Jennings’ association with the two books mentioned above does it for me.  Some things it is suicidal to be cynical about, and the influences we allow on our children are a whole set of them.  It is not OK that there is a political movement dedicated to teaching elementary school children about homosexuality, in defiance of anything their parents or the community at large may prefer.  And it is not OK that advocates of a radical political and social agenda are using the schools to reach America’s minor children with it.

If possible, it’s double not-OK that Obama appointed this individual to supervise a federally-administered concept of “safe schools” for the country.  Quite obviously, what “safe schools” means in this context is “schools in which straight kids of all kinds, including conservative and religious kids, are required to demonstrate positive affirmation of homosexuality, and in fact are taught to do so from their earliest years, well before they are of an age to understand the complex emotional matter of sex, or think critically about moral issues.”  “Safe schools” means “assuming that any failure to positively affirm homosexuality – even just remaining politely silent about it, or avoiding discussion of it – is evidence of a bigotry that may well be criminal, or at least may foster criminal tendencies that must be averted by forced indoctrination.”

Where does Obama find these people?  Hannity is right.  Jennings needs to go.

J.E. Dyer blogs at The Optimistic Conservative and “contentions“.

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