I’ve received a lot of e-mail asking why I haven’t written about the controversy over Kevin Jennings, Barack Obama’s “safe schools” czar. To be honest, the story is so shocking that I haven’t quite grasped how to approach it. Jennings ran an outfit called Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) from its inception in 1995 until last year. During that time, as Jim Hoft at Big Government has detailed, GLSEN offered sex education seminars to young teenagers within the framework of public education that went way, way beyond explanations of human biology and disease transmission. According to multiple sources, GLSEN discussed “fisting”, oral sex etiquette, and other techniques to 14-year-olds, until the program got exposed by local Massachusetts media, and the instructor got fired as a scapegoat. Jim has the audio from one of the seminars, discussing the proper hand position for “fisting”:

Margot Abels, who got fired by GLSEN after the content of the seminars became known, says Jennings and others at GLSEN knew the content of their curriculum and approved it. If one sees the handout material GLSEN provided for these classes, that becomes rather obvious:

For those not in the know, “rimming” has nothing to do with basketball, “watersports” does not relate to swimming, “toys” isn’t a nostalgic look back to Barbie and GI Joe, but there’s no mistaking “Mutual Jerkin’ Off”.

The Washington Times wonders what about all of this made Kevin Jennings qualified to be a “safe” school expert:

But there is more. There are shocking new revelations this week of tape recordings from a youth conference involving 14-year-old students. The conference, billed as a forum to encourage tolerance of homosexuality, was sponsored by Mr. Jennings’ organization and was held at Tufts University in March 2000. Mr. Jennings was executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) from its founding in 1995 until August 2008. The conference sessions appear to have had less to do with promoting tolerance and more to do with teaching children how to engage in sex. …

It is outrageous that someone involved in this scandal is being paid by the taxpayers to serve in a high-powered position at the Education Department, of all places. At some point, Mr. Duncan, Mr. Jennings, Obama administration spokesmen and the president himself are going to have to start answering questions about all this. Refusing to do so won’t make the issue go away.

Almost every parent wants their children to be well-informed on human biology and reproduction at the age of 14. They don’t want activists in their schools attempting to teach their 14-year-old children fetishistic techniques such as fisting, rimming, or watersports. Anyone who thinks that these topics are appropriate for 14-year-olds in the context of public education is someone who shouldn’t be within 500 yards of any school, let alone be the “safe schools” czar.

Twenty-five years ago, Monty Python’s Meaning of Life satirized parental fears over sex education in schools with a hilarious segment in which the teacher actually demonstrates sexual techniques with his wife to a room full of bored and distracted teenage boys.  The hilarity of this skit relies on the ridiculous notion that anyone would ever dream of doing something this inappropriate in a school.  Unfortunately, in this case, life has trumped satire — and now we call it the Obama administration.  This clip is NSFW, but so is this whole thread.

Update: Michelle has been all over this topic at her blog, of course.  She’s been checking into GLSEN’s funding here and here, and got Eastman Kodak on the record defending their support for this curriculum. On Wednesday, Michelle discussed the story and its myriad aspects with Sean Hannity: