The Smearing of Obama’s ‘Safe Schools Czar’ Kevin Jennings

The Smears:

In preparing this article, I noticed the unsurprising lack of context given in many of the stories about Kevin Jennings.  Wherever possible, I have linked to more complete sources of information than have generally been given in stories about Jennings.  I encourage readers to check out these links in order to achieve a richer understanding of this story.

Encouraging Statutory Rape

The Jennings smear campaign first hit my radar with this Fox News report, which consisted of largely uncritical repetitions of anti-gay activists’ accusations against Jennings.  The most serious charge was that Jennings failed to report the statutory rape of a student named Brewster.  The charge gained added resonance days later with the arrest of Roman Polanski.

The charge stems from an anecdote that Jennings related in an article for the book “One Teacher in Ten,” and an excerpt from a speech he gave years later.  Here’s what he said in the book:

Toward the end of my first year, during the spring of 1988, Brewster appeared in my office in the tow of one of my advisees, a wonderful young woman to whom I had been “out” for a long time.  “Brewster has something he needs to talk with you about,” she intoned ominously. Brewster squirmed at the prospect of telling, and we sat silently for a short while. On a hunch, I suddenly asked “What’s his name?” Brewster’s eyes widened briefly, and then 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.

At a 2000 speech to a GLSEN group in Iowa, Jennings related another part of the story:

And I said, “Brewster, what are you doing in there asleep?” And he said, “Well, I’m tired.” And I said, “Well we all are tired and we all got to school today.” And he said, “Well I was out late last night.” And I said, “What were you doing out late on a school night.” And he said, “Well, I was in Boston…” Boston was about 45 minutes from Concord. So 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. That was the only way he knew how to meet gay people. I was a closeted gay teacher, 24 years old, didn’t know what to say. Knew I should say something quickly so I finally said, “My best friend had just died of AIDS the week before.” I looked at Brewster and said, “You know, I hope you knew to use a condom.” He said to me something I will never forget, He said “Why should I, my life isn’t worth saving anyway.”

Fox News has since amended the report to indicate that the student was of the legal age of consent at the time, as verified by this copy of his driver’s license.  The student involved has also come forward to dispute Fox’s reporting.  That would seem to take care of Jennings’ legal obligation to report the incident.

Still, legal or not, if my 16 year-old son told a teacher, today, that he had met and gone home with an older man at a bus station, I would want to know about it.  Jennings himself admits that he made the wrong call:

“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.”

It’s important to note, however, that if my son went to a teacher in 1987, and didn’t have such a supportive father, I would understand at least some hesitation.  Sometimes, we forget how far we have come in such a short time.  During that bygone era, friends of gay teenagers were in short supply, even among police.  If you think the stigma of being gay hurts teenagers now, multiply that by exponential factors in 1987.

The right also accuses Jennings of “encouraging promiscuity” by advising Brewster to use a condom.  These are the same people who think that giving their daughters a cancer-preventing vaccine is encouraging promiscuity.  I mean that literally, these are the exact same people who opposed giving the HPV vaccine to young women.

Jennings’ critics also make the unsupported claim that wearing a condom was the only advice he gave Brewster.  In the 2000 speech, his remarks make it pretty clear he did not approve of the behavior, but in both anecdotes, the advice given was not the point of the story.

Those factors notwithstanding, I agree with Jennings that he made the wrong call.  I don’t think it wipes away the good work he has done since then, but rather, informs it.

In any case, I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a bunch of anti-gay zealots use their feigned concern for a teenager whom they would seek to deny rights and protections to run out of office the very man who works to provide them.  Equally galling is Fox News’ attempt to use this smear on Jennings, when they defended former House Speaker Denny Hastert’s role in keeping the Mark Foley page scandal quiet.

The Nambla Smear

Redstate’s Erick Erickson recently pressed this attack in particularly vile fashion, headlining his story “Common Decency Suggests We Should Not Have to Deal With This, But We Must Now Confront A White House Supportive of NAMBLA.”

Erickson’s idea of “common decency” is strange, to say the least.  He references Sean Hannity’s “reporting” on the subject, and Jennings’ contribution to the book “The Queering of Education.”  Since he doesn’t provide any links to support his accusations, I will.

The entirety of the NAMBLA smear, one of the most prejudicial accusations you can make, stems from a line in a speech that Jennings gave in 1997:

One of the people that’s always inspired me is Harry Hay, who started the first ongoing gay rights groups in America.

Jennings makes a few other references to Hay, all in the context of Hay’s founding of the Mattachine Society, the gay rights group he refers to in the opening line.

Henry “Harry” Hay was, indeed, a pioneering figure in the gay rights movement.  Much later in his life, he was also supportive of including NAMBLA under the gay rights umbrella, a fact that mainstream gay advocates rejected and viewed as an embarrassment.  As George Stephanopoulos pointed out, Jennings’ praise for Hay was confined to his early work, and there’s no reason to believe Jennings even knew of Hay’s “association” with the group.  The fact that this information was omitted from Hay obituaries in major newspapers supports this conclusion.

Stephanopoulos also guessed correctly that Hannity, et al, were overselling Hay’s NAMBLA connection, a fact that the Washington Examiner’s Mark Tapscott was forced to acknowledge.  Hay was not a member, and had no formal connection to the group.

Suggesting that Jennings endorses NAMBLA is like saying that any admirer of Newt Gingrich supports adultery.  It’s absurd.

As for Jennings’ foreword to “Queering Elementary Education,” I’m not sure which passage Hannity and Erickson find frightening.  The book is devoted to scholarly essays on the subject of ending anti-gay bigotry in schools.  You can read Jennings’ contribution here.

“Fistgate” (NSFW!)

I think FRC just included this one for kicks.  The incident described is a serious one, to be sure, but you’ll never believe the link they try to make with Jennings.

At a 2000 statewide education conference co-sponsored by GLSEN, a seminar for students age 14-21 went horribly wrong.  There were all kinds of inappropriate conversations had, but here’s the quote that gives this scandal its name:

Fisting [forcing one's entire hand into another person's rectum or vagina] often gets a bad rap….[It's] an experience of letting somebody into your body that you want to be that close and intimate with…[and] to put you into an exploratory mode.

The teachers involved were all fired.

What was Jennings’ role in this?  He denounced the seminar, and expressed concern that the incident would be used to tar GLSEN and the gay rights movement.  Hmm, where’d he get an idea like that?

Jennings Hates God and Did Drugs

This, and most of the remaining smears, were well-handled by Amanda Terkel at Think Progress months ago, but I will offer my take on them as well.  From that Fox News story:

…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.”

…The religious right is also alarmed by Jennings’ personal views about religion. In his memoir, he wrote of his views while he was in high school:

“What had [God] done for me, other than make me feel shame and guilt? Squat. Screw you, buddy — I don’t need you around anymore, I decided.

“The Baptist Church had left me only a legacy of self-hatred, shame, and disappointment, and I wanted no more of it or its Father. The long erosion of my faith was now complete, and I, for many years, reacted violently to anyone who professed any kind of religion. Decades passed before I opened a Bible again.”

This is pretty easy.  Jennings now considers himself “a religious man,” and is on the board of the Union Theological Seminary.

What I find particularly amusing about this is that I grew up in an evangelical church, so I know these guys are lying hypocrites.  At every church function I ever attended, the highlight was always somebody giving his “testimony,” telling how he came to his faith, including passages just like Jennings’.

In fact, disgraced Christian comedian Mike Warnke made an entire career out of bragging about all the sex, drugs, and Satanism he engaged in before being saved.

Promotes Homosexuality in Schools

This is what it’s really all about, and it is a characterization that Fox News explicitly endorses.  In their opening paragraph, they present this as fact.  Here’s what they use to support the claim:

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.”

So, wanting to let kids know that being called gay is not a reason for an 11 year-old child to kill himself is “promoting homosexuality?”  Jennings isn’t admitting to promoting homosexuality, he’s exposing the inherent bias in the phrase.  Here’s the full transcript.

What this boils down to is a shameful and dishonest attempt to undermine the work of a man who has dedicated his life to making schools safer for all children.  Good for George Stephanopoulos for slapping it down, and shame on any legitimate newsman who doesn’t.

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