Pat Dollard | Young Americans

World Net Daily:

Demand for the removal of homosexual advocate Kevin Jennings from his position as chief of the Department of Education’s Office of Safe Schools is growing, with the Washington Post saying the appointment was wrong and thousands joining a petition.

WND reported efforts by the organization Jennings founded, the Gay, Lesbian Straight Education Network, to indoctrinate young children into the homosexual lifestyle when a conference later dubbed “Fistgate” was held in Massachusetts in 2000.

At GrassrootsNation.com, several thousand people have signed a new petition addressed to Obama, demanding Jennings’ dismissal.

“As a citizen of the United States of America I respectfully request and demand that you immediately fire Kevin Jennings from the post of Safe Schools Czar,” said the petition. “Mr. Jennings’ long history of promoting a radical homosexual agenda in the schools is completely inappropriate and I object to my children being subjected to this. Furthermore, it has recently been reported that the group Mr. Jennings founded (GLSEN) is promoting books for schoolchildren containing some of the most explicit and vile sexual content imaginable. Please remove this man from your administration and stop exposing our children to such inappropriate material.”

At The Washington Times, a series of editorials has addressed worries over Jennings’ influence on children.

After a warning that the topic is “sexually graphic” and normally never would be published except for the “background of a senior presidential appointee … who is in a position to influence how and what our children are taught,” the newspaper calls for Jennings’ removal.

“Teaching children sexual techniques is simply not appropriate. Unfortunately, it is part of a consistent pattern by some homosexual activists to promote underage homosexuality while pretending that their mission is simply to promote tolerance for so-called alternative lifestyles,” the newspaper said.

“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, [Education Secretary Arne] 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.”

In May, WND broke the news of Jennings’ federal appointment to oversee “safety” in the nation’s public schools.

WND also has reported Jennings’ background of homosexual activism, his founding of GLSEN and his agenda, including when it was revealed a publisher of “gay erotica” sought him out to write a book aimed at encouraging homosexuality in high schools and colleges.

Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, also has introduced a resolution to Congress that Jennings be removed.

“Be it resolved, that the House of Representatives (1) considers the behavior of a ‘Safe Schools Czar’ promoting sexual relationships between adults and children reprehensible; (2) supports the belief that any and all who occupy the position of ‘Safe Schools Czar’ should not promote criminal behavior; and (3) calls on the president and the secretary of education to find an immediate replacement for Kevin Jennings.”

The Times said the issue isn’t about homosexual acts but about “promoting sex between children and adults.”

“It’s time for President Obama to make clear that abetting such illegal perversion has no place in his administration,” the newspaper said.

Jennings has admitted that while he was a teacher, he once gave a reportedly underage student advice to use a condom when the student said he had been seeking sexual encounters in public restrooms.

Continued the newspaper, “The evidence suggesting he is unfit to serve as a senior presidential appointee is startling and plentiful. It was revealed this week that Mr. Jennings was involved in promoting a reading list for children 13 years old or older that made the most explicit sex between children and adults seem normal and acceptable. This brought up anew Mr. Jennings’ past controversies, such as his seeming encouragement of sex between one of his high school students and a much older man as well as his praise for Harry Hay, a notorious supporter of the North American Man Boy Love Association.”

Further, and alarming, the editorial said, were “shocking new revelations … of tape recordings from a young conference involving 14-year-old students. … The conference session appear[ed] to have had less to do with promoting tolerance and more to do with teaching children how to engage in sex.”

WND’s own reporting on the conference dates back to the event in 2000, when it was reported that three Massachusetts HIV instructors taught children sexual activities at a conference Jennings’ GLSEN sponsored at Tufts University.

Robert Knight, a senior fellow for the American Civil Rights Union, cited the reaction from homosexual advocates as a key reason to pursue further questions.

“What do you do if you’re caught in something shocking, inexcusable and even criminal?” he wrote. “You divert attention by getting someone to attack the messenger: ‘Don’t look at this stuff! Look over there!’”

He said Jennings’ “defenders” have now begun to “tar anyone who brings Jennings’ shocking record to light.” He cited a description from the Southern Poverty Law Center of a Massachusetts organization that has researched Jennings as a “hate group.”

But Knight questioned how anyone could defend “the most shocking evidence” in the case, a booklet made available at an April 30, 2005, GLSEN-sponsored seminar at Brookline High School, in Brookline, Mass., title “The Little Black Book: V 2.0 Queer in the 21st Century.”

Knight said the pamphlet is “packed with pornographic pictures, obscenities and advice to kids on how to engage in perverse and dangerous behaviors using all sorts of bodily functions. Included is a helpful list of the gay bars in Boston where underage teens can become prey for boozed-up, over-21 patrons. The bars’ special attractions are listed, including such amenities as strippers and video porn.”

WND has cited a report by the Massachusetts group, Mass Resistance, that teachers were offered continuing education credit for attending the sex seminar in 2000.

The subject of Jennings’ promotion of homosexuality and GLSEN’s sponsorship of events has been raised as a direct challenge to Jennings’ fitness to hold office. As WND has reported, several dozen members of Congress have signed a letter to President Obama demanding his dismissal.

A teacher who attended the seminar also has confirmed in a recorded interview with Jim Hoft of the Gateway Pundit blog that Jennings was the chief of the event

The teacher insisted on anonymity in her interview with Hoft out of concern for her own safety and that of her family. She addressed the focus of seminars at the conference that, according to reports, provided young children instructions on how to engage in homosexual acts.

The teacher, identified only at MT, said, “This whole conference was his [Kevin Jennings'] dream and his mindset. This was his vision from the very beginning.”

Brian Camenker and Amy Contrada at Mass Resistance in Massachusetts also have posted online audio recordings from the seminar, documenting discussions such as whether to “spit or swallow” during oral sex and how to accomplish “fisting.”

“Of course Jennings and the Massachusetts Department of Education knew beforehand what the ’sexuality educators’ would discuss with children at the ‘fisting’ workshop,” Mass Resistance said in a recent report. “The instructor Margot Abels said so herself.”

The state instruction program, labeled “Safe Schools for Gay and Lesbian Students,” was held April 18, 2000.

Multiple WND messages left with the U.S. Department of Education as well as Jennings’ office were not returned.

But yet another campaign to remove Jennings is available online under the website StopJennings.org. The site tells why signers believe Jennings is unfit for the office.

“We respectfully request that you remove Kevin Jennings, the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, from your administration. It is clear that Mr. Jennings lacks the appropriate qualifications and ethical standards to serve in this capacity.”

Dozens of members of Congress have joined the effort to remove Jennings, who has described how he developed the strategy to use the word “safe” to promote homosexuality in Massachusetts schools.

WND also has reported concerns by Mission America over subject material in books recommended by GLSEN for school children.

The group’s Linda Harvey warned, “GLSEN believes the early sexualization of children can be beneficial. This means that virtually any sexual activity as well as exposure to graphic sexual images and material, is not just permissible but good for children, as part of the process of discovering their sexuality.”

Her report cited one passage from a book recommended for students in grades 7-12: “I released his arms. They glided around my neck, pulling my head down to his. I stretched full length on top of him, our heads touching. Our heavy breathing from the struggle gradually subsided. I felt …”

What follows in “Growing Up Gay/Growing Up Lesbian” by Malcolm Boyd is a “graphic description” of a homosexual encounter.

Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League wrote, “On September 23, I wrote a news release on the curious moral credentials of Kevin Jennings to be President Obama’s Safe Schools Czar: a former drug user and irresponsible teen counselor, he is also a Christian basher.

“What was not known at the time is that he is also a proud member of Act Up, the homosexual urban terrorist group that broke into St. Patrick’s Cathedral (in New York City) in 1989 and disrupted Mass; the Eucharist was desecrated and obscene depictions of Cardinal O’Connor were posted,” he continued.

“Now a group called MassResistance, and the website WorldNetDaily, have exposed Jennings as a member of Act Up. And he is no mere member: Jennings is listed as a donor to a sick display, ‘Act Up New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993,’ currently featured at the Harvard Art Museum. Harvard, of course, would never feature a display of Klan paraphernalia and say it was being done for the purpose of ‘dialogue,’” he said.

“The real story here is not the corruption of Harvard – that’s old hat – the real story is the president of the United States choosing a morally challenged anti-Catholic homosexual to join his team. That Jennings belongs to, and sponsors, an urban terrorist organization, should alone disqualify him from public service at a municipal level. And remember, Obama did not choose him to monitor global cooling – he was chosen to instruct youth on moral matters,” Donohue said.

“Catholics deserve to know why Obama likes Jennings.”

A YouTube video revealed Jeff Davis, Jennings’ “partner,” addressing a banquet and saying of Jennings, “He was a member of Act Up. Act Up! So it’s like – you know – here’s a big gay activist. BIG gay activist!”

The video was removed shortly after the WND report appeared, but Mass Resistance makes it available on the Internet.

According to “The Marketing of Evil,” by WND’s David Kupelian, Act Up was extreme from its outset:

The defiant, storm-trooper tactics of in-your-face groups like Act Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) may or may not have been successful in pressuring the federal government to increase its commitment to combating AIDS. But such tactics definitely were successful in giving activist homosexuals a very bad name.

Clearly, the young movement was flirting with oblivion if it persisted in such ugly, indefensible tactics. It needed a new, more civilized direction if it ever hoped to convince Americans that homosexuality was a perfectly normal alternative lifestyle.

According to Mass Resistance research by Amy Contrada, the Act Up effort also:

* Staged a “die in” at Massachusetts General Hospital to protest the unavailability of PCP drug AP.

* Protested Astra Pharmaceutical Products’ refusal to release the experimental antiviral drug Foscarnet.

* Disrupted opening night at the San Francisco Opera.

* Protested design of clinical trials planned by Harvard School of Medicine.

* Jammed phone lines of health insurance database company protesting their use of “sexual deviation” classification.

* Halted Boston’s trolley service and traffic in front of Harvard School of Public Health to press the federal government into approving two new AIDS drugs..