IFI Update: Help Oust Kevin Jennings — “School Safety Czar”
The indefensible decision of Arne Duncan to appoint radical homosexual activist and founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), Kevin Jennings to the position of Assistant Deputy Secretary of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools is finally generating the public opposition it deserves.
Criticism of Jennings is coming from multiple sources all over the country. From small and large pro-family organizations to the Washington Times to Sean Hannity — all are calling for Jennings to resign or be terminated. Now is the time to act. Call or email your representatives and senators to politely demand the ousting of Kevin Jennings who is at least as unsuitable and controversial an appointment as the former “Green Czar” Van Jones was.
Jennings began his career in education as a teacher in a private Massachusetts boarding school. He has written and spoken about an incident that occurred when he was teaching there in which a troubled fifteen-year-old boy confessed to Jennings that he was having a sexual relationship with an older man he had met in a Boston bus station bathroom. Jennings’ response to this troubled teen was to advise him to use condoms. Even more troubling, Jennings failed to fulfill his legal obligation to report sexual activity between an adult and a child under the age of 18. When Jennings’ professional misconduct was reported to the National Education Association (NEA) by the chair of the NEA Republican Educator’s Caucus, Jennings threatened a lawsuit against the teacher who reported it.
For a fascinating expose of this disturbing chapter in Jennings’ disturbing life, read these articles by Grove City College professor, Warren Throckmorton:
Remembering Brewster
Fortunately, Jennings left teaching but unfortunately for the nation went on to found GLSEN whose mission is to use public funds and public education to normalize homosexuality. GLSEN was the sponsor of the notorious sexuality workshop “Teach Out” held at Tufts University in 2000 where students as young as 14 were exposed to graphic descriptions of deviant sexual practices by adult homosexual “educators.” This workshop has come to be known as “Fistgate” because of one particular sexual practice taught to teens.
In addition, GLSEN is the sponsor of the annual Day of Silence, a pro-homosexual protest that takes place in thousands of high schools and increasing numbers of middle schools around the country every year. On this day, students are encouraged and permitted to remain silent all day even during class in support of GLSEN’s view of homosexuality.
On September 30, 2009, twenty-one years after the boarding school debacle and with public pressure mounting, Jennings finally issued this rationalization:
Twenty-one years later I can see how I should have handled the situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities. Teachers back then had little training and guidance about this kind of thing. All teachers should have a basic level of preparedness. I would like to see the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools play a bigger role in helping to prepare teachers.
How convenient.
His “mishandling” of the incident wasn’t really his fault. Oh no, it was a lack of “training,” “guidance,” and “preparedness.” How could a 24-year-old teacher be expected to know that he should report sexual activity between a teen under his charge and an adult male whom the teen met in a bus station bathroom located almost an hour from the boarding school where the teen lived? If only the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools had existed then with a zealous homosexual activist at the helm, Jennings would have known exactly what to do.
Kevin Jennings violated both professional standards of ethics as well as Massachusetts law. He has publicly expressed contempt for theologically orthodox Christianity and Christians and has spent his entire adult life trying to exploit public education to effect social changes that reflect his sexual preferences and unproven, controversial, and perverse views of homosexuality. His appointment to the Department of Education is an unmitigated outrage that must be opposed.