Homosexual in charge of school 'safety' draws opposition

Kevin Jennings

A coalition of Christian organizations has launched an effort to have Kevin Jennings, the founder of the pro-homosexual GLSEN organization who has been appointed in president Obama's administration to oversee the nation's "safe schools" program, booted from office.

"The American Family Association of Pennsylvania is repulsed by the idea that Jennings, who has a twisted idea of safety, will help make official policy for our nation's school children," the organization said. "Parents should be VERY concerned with Kevin Jennings' appointment."

WND reported earlier when it became known that Jennings, who founded the activist group that promotes homosexual clubs in high schools, middle schools and grade schools and is the driving force behind the annual "Day of Silence" celebration of homosexuality in many districts, was handed a federal appointment where he will be responsible for overseeing "safety" in the nation's public schools.

At the time, Linda Harvey of Mission America, which educates people on anti-Christian trends in the nation, said it is nothing more than a "tragedy" for an open homosexual who has "had an enormously detrimental impact on the climate in our schools" to be in such a position.

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The appointment of Kevin Jennings was posted – with little fanfare – on a government list of federal jobs recently. He was named by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to be the Assistant Deputy Secretary in the Office of Safe Schools.

He previously worked to raise money for the presidential campaign for President Obama.

In the new post, he'll be working on "safe schools" programs for educational institutions nationwide, said Harvey.

According to the AFA of Pennsylvania, Jennings supervised his organization during a time when it sponsored events featuring pornographic material at Brookline High School in Massachusetts in 2005, taught a session to school children on how to engaged in homosexual acts – a conference that became known as "Fistgate," and has used school children for political efforts during the group's "Day of Silence."

"Since Jennings was one of President Obama's fundraisers during his campaign, apparently this is payback time by giving Jennings access to America's impressionable children to further indoctrinate them that 'gay is okay,'" said Diane Gramley, president of the organization.

"Our schools are being used in a great social experiment and it's the children who are the guinea pigs," Gramley said.

Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, said the appointment actually endangers youth, and urged Duncan to pull the nomination, "due to Jennings' vicious anti-religious bigotry and his role with an extremist homosexual group that has recklessly endangered youth."

It was the 2000 "Fistgate" scandal in which homosexual adults at a GLSEN-sponsored youth workshop "guided young teenagers on how to engage in perversions including the horrifying 'gay' fetish known as 'fisting," that convinced him Jennings is a danger, LaBarbera said.

"Kevin Jennings is one of the most hateful, anti-Christian 'queer' activists in America," LaBarbera described, citing Jennings use of obscenities to describe Christians.

"Barack Obama's homosexual agenda is beginning to take shape – but he has no election mandate to impose GLSEN's radical vision of celebrating homosexuality, bisexuality and gender confusion (transsexuality) in U.S. schools," LaBarbera said.

"Anti-religious bigots should not be setting policy for schools – and promoting dangerous sex and gender identities to youth is the antithesis of 'safety,'" he said.

According to the organization's research, it was in 1997 when GLSEN announced its goal of indoctrinating children starting in kindergarten.

There, Jaki Williams, a GLSEN activist, said, children at age five are "developing their superego."

"That's when the saturation process needs to begin," Williams said. "Five-year-olds really are very interested in the big questions. They're very interested in sex, death, and love, and they ask those questions, and they talk about them. And we want to help them find the answers."

According to Vision America, Jennings "has a long record of vocal opposition against Christian conservatives."

In March 2000, Jennings told an audience, "We need to ignore the hard-core bigots, get more of the hard-core fair-minded people to speak up, and we'll pull that 60 percent to our side … We have to quit being afraid of the religious right. I'm trying not to say 'F--- 'em!' which is what I want to say," the report said.

According to Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council, Jennings' definition of a safe school is where homosexuality is actively affirmed.

He spoke with Greg Corombos of Radio America/WND in the following audio:

Jennings, who wrote the foreword for a book called "Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling," also gave a speech in which he told the "religious right" to "drop dead."

On Jennings' own website, a biographical sketch talks about how his work as an activist started when he used a school assembly in a district where he was a teacher to announce his homosexuality.

He soon started the GLSEN activist group and, the report said, "has spent the last 12 years building GLSEN into a national organization at the forefront of a bold movement that now works with over 3,000 Gay-Straight Alliances."

But a blogger who calls himself Beetle Blogger cited another statement from Jennings about his early promotion of homosexuality in schools.

The blogger quoted Jennings saying, "We immediately seized upon the opponent's calling card – safety – and explained how homophobia represents a threats to students' safety by creating a climate where violence, name-calling, health problems, and suicide are common. Titling our report, 'Making Schools Safe for Gay and Lesbian Youth,' we automatically threw our opponents onto the defensive and stole their best line of attack. This … short-circuited their arguments and left them back-peddling from day one."

Harvey said the appointment really is not surprising, given the pro-homosexual position adopted by Obama and Jennings' fund-raising for the Democrat.

But she warned when "safe" is combined with "LGBT" as is happening at the federal agency, "What you have is the silencing of any conservative opinion. That's what they consider safety."

"This is an outrageous 'in-your-face, take this, we don't care about your version of safety' for kids," she said.