Kevin Jennings -- Unsafe for America's Schools

Written by Tony Perkins:

 

Few Obama administration appointments have been as startling as Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s appointment of Kevin Jennings, the homosexual founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

Jennings was undoubtedly chosen for this post (which does not require Senate confirmation) because the foundation of the homosexual education agenda is the concept of “safe schools.” However, “safe schools” as GLSEN defines them are like “hate crime laws” for kids. GLSEN’s model legislation would create protected categories like “sex, gender, . . . sexual orientation, [and] gender identity or expression.” (Ironically, they don’t include protection for the factor that GLSEN’s own research shows is the most common reason for harassment of students -- “the way they look or their body size.”) Everyone opposes violence, name-calling, and other forms of bullying. As with “hate crimes,” though, GLSEN’s “safe schools” do not protect everyone equally, but instead single out homosexuals for more protection than others.

Despite this inequity, some might be tempted to support the “safe schools” agenda as long as it is limited to ending bullying, and does not extend to actively affirming or promoting homosexuality. However, in a 1995 speech, Jennings admitted that the rhetoric about “safety” was a political device, saying that it “threw our opponents on the defensive, and stole their best line of attack. This framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling.” In a 1997 speech he embraced the idea of actively “promoting” homosexuality, looking forward to a day when “people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say, ‘Yeah, who cares?’” And an unsigned article on the GLSEN website in 2000 declared, “The pursuit of safety and affirmation are one and the same goal.”

While Jennings promotes tolerance toward homosexuals, he is unwilling to reciprocate by extending tolerance to those who disagree with him. His memoir, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son, seethes with bitterness toward Southern Baptists, the country’s largest Protestant denomination (within which he was raised). Perhaps that’s why, in a speech in a New York church in 2000, Jennings is reported to have said, “We have to quit being afraid of the religious right. . . . I’m trying not to say, ‘[F---] ‘em!’ which is what I want to say, because I don’t care what they think! Drop dead!”

He wants homosexuality to be taught in American schools -- in his book Always My Child, Jennings calls for a “diversity policy that mandates including LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] themes in the curriculum.”  But he wants only one side of this controversial issue to be aired, and apparently believes in locking sexually confused kids into a “gay” identity. That’s the implication of his declaration, “Ex-gay messages have no place in our nation’s public schools. A line has been drawn. There is no ‘other side’ when you’re talking about lesbian, gay and bisexual students.”

Jennings does not limit his promotion of homosexuality in schools only to high schools or middle schools. He wrote the foreword for a book titled Queering Elementary Education, which includes an essay declaring that “‘queerly raised’ children are agents” using “strategies of adaptation, negotiation, resistance, and subversion.”

Perhaps the most dramatic illustration, however, of Jennings’ unfitness for a “safe schools” post involves an incident when he taught at Concord Academy, a private boarding school in Massachusetts. In his book One Teacher in Ten (the title is based on the discredited myth, now abandoned even by “gay” activist groups, that ten percent of the population is homosexual), he tells about a young male sophomore, “Brewster,” who confessed to Jennings “his involvement with an older man he met in Boston.” But at a GLSEN rally in 2000, Jennings told a more explicit version of “Brewster’s” story. Jennings here quotes the boy and then comments: “‘I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him.’ High school sophomore, 15 years old. That was the only way he knew how to meet gay people.”

Did Jennings report this high-risk behavior to the authorities? To the school? To the boy’s parents? No -- he just told the boy, “I hope you knew to use a condom.” Sex between an adult and a young person below the “age of consent” (which varies from state to state) is a crime known as statutory rape, and some states mandate that people in certain professions report such abuse.

I do not know if “Brewster” was below the age of consent, nor whether Jennings was a mandatory reporter or violated mandatory reporting laws. When members of the National Education Association protested an NEA award to Jennings because of this incident, Jennings called the criticism “potentially libelous” and a GLSEN lawyer demanded a retraction. But when officials at Concord Academy -- the school where Jennings had taught -- were asked about the scenario described in one of Jennings’ accounts, a school spokesman said that such an incident should be reported.

In any case, public service requires adherence to a higher ethical standard than bare compliance with the law. Instead of veiled threats, Jennings now owes the public a thorough explanation of the “Brewster” incident. Regardless of the law, a 15-year-old who meets sexual partners in a bus station restroom requires more than a condom to be “safe.”

Kevin Jennings has neither the temperament nor the ethical standards needed for public service. His history suggests a commitment to serving only one narrow part of the student population, not all students. He is unfit for the post to which he’s been assigned, and Secretary Duncan should withdraw his appointment at once.

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Mr. Perkins is president of the Family Research Council.

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