Well, it seems like hard evidence of the falseness and stupidity of the charges against Kevin Jennings weren't enough; both Sean Hannity and the AFA are continuing to wage war against Obama's pick for the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools, who is known for co-founding GLSEN, the org responsible for the National Day of Silence, Gay-Straight Alliances, and several key studies on anti-LGBT bullying in schools.
Michelle Goldberg is reading the situation the same way I am:
The illogic didn't really matter, though, because the right's escalating war on Jennings is all about appealing to primal emotion. Jennings, the assistant deputy secretary of Education in charge of the Office of Safe & Drug-Free Schools, is the target of one of the ugliest homophobic witch-hunts we've seen in a while. It plays directly into classic right-wing narratives of predatory gay recruitment. "Children don't need to be learning about homosexual practices in elementary school," says Princeton Professor Robert George, in a video on the anti-Jennings Web site preserveinnocence.org. On Monday, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) sent a letter to Obama calling on him to fire Jennings. "Mr. Jennings' life's work has been the promotion of homosexuality, much of it in our elementary schools," he wrote.
The AFA wants him fired, and Sean Hannity, after seeing how his claims that Jennings tolerates rape fell through, is now accusing him of supporting pedophilia:
Kevin Jennings said Harry Hay, one of the co-founders of Mattachine, was cool. Harry Hay, at one point, wanted NAMBLA to march in Pride.
It's not guilt by association. It's pedophilia by incredibly weak association. But these people are homophobes, so they don't need to have the fact in order to associate "gay" with "pedophilia."
The AFA sent out an email blast to their sheeple:
Time for "Safe and Drug Free Schools" Czar to resign
Contact Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and your members of Congress today!
October 6, 2009Kevin Jennings is an open homosexual who is now serving the Department of Education as President Obama's "Safe and Drug Free Schools" czar.
Jennings is the founder of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which pushes so-called "anti-bullying" policies which even GLSEN admits are really about promoting "affirmation" of homosexual behavior in the school system.
Jennings is intolerant of the "religious right," 90% of whom enroll their children in public schools, and said in a 2000 speech "I'm trying not to say '[F---] 'em'...I don't care what they think. Drop dead!"
He wants homosexual indoctrination of students at all levels, having written the forward to a book entitled Queering Elementary Education, and saying in 2004, "Ex-gay messages have no place in our nation's public schools...There is no 'other side' when you're talking about lesbian, gay and bisexual students."
By his own admission he failed his legal duty to report what he believed to be a case of statutory rape when a young student approached him for counsel after the boy had been preyed on by an older adult in a local bus station bathroom. Jennings' main piece of advice: "I hope you know how to use a condom."
He writes in his 2006 memoir without any remorse of frequently getting "drunk and stoned" when he was a teenager.
Kevin Jennings is not qualified under any ethical standard to be entrusted with the safety of our nation's public school children.
Here's the description of Queering Elementary Education from Amazon:
Queering Elementary Education is not about teaching kids to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or straight. It's not part of a sinister stratagem in the "gay agenda." Instead, these provocative and thoughtful essays advocate the creation of classrooms that challenge categorical thinking, promote interpersonal intelligence, and foster critical consciousness. Queer elementary classrooms are those where parents and educators care enough about their children to trust the human capacity for understanding and their educative abilities to foster insight into the human condition.
Yeah. It's not a guidebook to properly molesting children so that they turn out gay, although I'd imagine that's what the home-schooling crowd thinks of it.
This whole thing is, of course, about opposing anything Obama does for the sake of it. But this one wouldn't be happening if the right could put "gay" next to "children" and assume that everyone would think "pedophilia."
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4 Comments
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these people make my stomach hurt...I can't understand their thining process at all.
yellowdog granny | October 12, 2009 1:28 PM
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I have pretty much worn out a keyboard on this issue. Perkins weighed in today. Ted Pike is claiming a Jewish-Gay conspiracy (alas, I am in both groups).
Today, some nitwit wrote an opinion piece in the Naples Daily News that was explicit:
David Hart | October 12, 2009 2:54 PM
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Don't stereotype all homeschoolers as anti-gay. This PFLAG mom homeschooled her kids but not for religious reasons. Some of us do it for its educational value, and one benefit is that our kids never were exposed to the anti-gay talk so when their brother came out, it was no big deal.
PFLAGmom | October 14, 2009 12:56 AM
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We in the lgbt community need to know our history and facts, so we can refute the lies. Harry Hay was not a "NAMBLA Hay" any more than he was a 'Radical Faerie" Hay, or a ONE Hay (he and John Burnside worked at ONE as volunteers where they bult their longtime relationship.
Hay did found our movement, there is no doubt or question about this. So he was Mattachine's Hay even though a few years after the founding he was out because new members feared (perhaps rightly) that his Commnist Party background would harm the work.
Actually this/he is the perfect explanation of why the communists failed-they forced out a brilliant man, who then went on the found the successful fight for civil/equal rights of homosexual Americans.
Billy Glover | October 14, 2009 11:44 AM
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