Obama Education Appointee: The Fox Guarding the Hen House
(Source: Creative Commons)
A few months ago I wrote about Kevin Jennings, the homosexual activists appointed to a high position within the Department of Education.
Jennings is the the founder and former head of the pro-homosexual Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) organization, a group that pushes the normalization and acceptance of homosexuality despite the moral and health pitfalls of this practice.
This is not someone who should in any way, shape, form or fashion be involved in crafting education policy for America’s children.
Now more information about Jennings’ troubled past is coming to light.
This Fox News article cites several disturbing facts about Jennings (all dutifully denied as “smears,” of course).
Consider his past drug use–apparently without regret–in relation to his leadership of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools:
Jennings’ detractors note that he made four references to his personal drug abuse in his 2007 autobiography, “Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son: A Memoir.” On page 103, discussing his high school years in Hawaii in the early 1980s, Jennings 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.”
Sprigg said that quote is particularly unacceptable for someone who has been named to lead America’s Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.
“It would be nice to hear from Mr. Jennings … that he regrets the drug use he engaged in when he was in school,” Sprigg said. “But in this autobiography, which Mr. Jennings wrote only recently, he never expresses any regret about his youthful drug use.”
Jennings past drug use could indeed serve to educate young people to the dangers of drug use…if he were to indicate regret for this activity and strongly condemn his past behavior. However, according to this article, there is a disturbing lack of regret from Jennings on this issue.
Also, some 12 years ago, Jennings made it clear he wanted to promote homosexuality to school children, and expected a day to come when the people were lulled into complacency and would consider it “normal.”
In 1997, according to a transcript put together by Brian J. Burt, managing editor of the student-run Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Jennings said he hoped that promoting homosexuality in schools would be considered fine in the future.
“One of our board members” was called to testify before Congress when they had hearings on the promotion of homosexuality in schools,” Jennings said. “And we were busy putting out press releases, and saying, “We’re not promoting homosexuality, that’s not what our program’s about. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah…. ‘
“Being finished might someday mean that most straight people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say ‘Yeah, who cares?’ because they wouldn’t necessarily equate homosexuality with something bad that you would not want to promote.”
Then comes perhaps the most disturbing item: allegations that Jennings covered up a student’s underage homosexual encounter with an older man.
Another controversy from Jennings’ past concerns an account in his 1994 book, “One Teacher In 10,” about how, as a teacher, he knew a high school sophomore named Brewster who was “involved” with an “older man”:
“Out spilled a story about his involvement with an older man he had met in Boston. I listened, sympathized, and offered advice. He left my office with a smile on his face that I would see every time I saw him on the campus for the next two years, until he graduated.”
The account led Diane Lenning, head of the National Education Association’s Republican Educators Caucus, to criticize Jennings in 2004 for not alerting school and state authorities about the boy’s situation, calling Jennings’ failure to do so an “unethical practice.”
Jennings threatened to sue Lenning for libel, saying she had no evidence that he knew the student in question was sexually active, or that he failed to report the situation.
But a professor at Grove City College in Pennsylvania, Warren Throckmorton, has produced an audio recording of a speech Jennings gave in 2000 at a GLSEN rally in Iowa, in which Jennings made it clear that he believed the student was sexually active:
“I said, ‘What were you doing in Boston on a school night, Brewster?’ He got very quiet, and he finally looked at me and said, ‘Well I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him.’ High school sophomore, 15 years old’ I looked at Brewster and said, ‘You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.’” [Audio is available on the professor's Web site.]
The Washington Times reported in 2004 that “state authorities said Mr. Jennings filed no report in 1988.” A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department for Children and Families, the department to which Jennings — as a Massachusetts teacher — would have been legally obliged to report the situation, did not return calls from FOXNews.com.
Anyone with their eyes open knew before the election we would be getting an ultra-Left, Marxist, social-engineering, pro-homosexual radical if we elected Barack Obama to the presidency–and we did it anyway. We can’t say we didn’t know.
But the fact remains that our children are in the cross hairs of his dangerous, extremist agenda, and we need to demand that threats like Jennings be removed from anything remotely associated with our nation’s children.
Note: Reader comments are reviewed before publishing, and only salient comments that add to the topic will be published. Profanity is absolutely not allowed and will be summarily deleted. Spam, copied statements and other material not comprised of the reader’s own opinion will also be deleted.
