Obama school-‘safety’ chief: How to jam homosexuality

By Bob Unruh


Kevin Jennings

President Obama’s choice to monitor school safety once boasted that he introduced homosexual advocacy into the school system in Massachusetts by manipulating the message presented to lawmakers.

The revelations about Kevin Jennings, who was named assistant deputy secretary for the office of Safe & Drug Free Schools in the U.S. Department of Education, come just as several of Obama’s “czars” have come under scrutiny for their actions, opinions and affiliations.

Environmental adviser Van Jones resigned last weekend after revelations of his links to communism and his advocacy for the movement that contends the U.S. government conspired to allow or cause 9/11.
Harvard professor Cass Sunstein, confirmed this week by the Senate as the administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Budget and Management, was exposed for his belief that animals should be given legal rights like humans.

Technically, Jennings is not one of Obama’s “czars,” who are special advisers to the president accountable to no one but the president. Jennings was named to a post in the Department of Education. However, his hiring did not require legislative oversight, such as the Senate vetting process required for other appointees.

Jennings is the founder and former executive director of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which “works to make schools safe for all students, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity,” according to the government announcement of his appointment.

In his position, he’s responsible for oversight of programs that involve “safety” for public schools across the nation.

In 1995, he gave a speech in which he described how he has used the concept of “safety” in schools to promote homosexual advocacy in public schools in Massachusetts. He gave a speech called “Winning the Culture War” at the Human Rights Campaign Fund Leadership Conference on March 5 of that year.

Excerpts have been posted on the website of MassResistance, where chief Brian Camenker has worked to oppose the demands of homosexual activists.

In the speech, Jennings described how he was concerned about being described as promoting homosexuality, so he chose to campaign on the idea of “safety” instead.

“If the radical right can succeed in portraying us as preying on children, we will lose. Their language – ‘promoting homosexuality’ is one example – is laced with subtle and not-so-subtle innuendo that we are ‘after their kids,'” he told the conference.

“We must learn from the abortion struggle, where the clever claiming of the term ‘pro-life’ allowed those who opposed abortion on demand to frame the issue to their advantage, to make sure that we do not allow ourselves to be painted into a corner before the debate even begins.”

He continued, “In Massachusetts the effective reframing of this issue was the key to the success of the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. We immediately seized upon the opponent’s calling card – safety – and explained how homophobia represents a threat 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 framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling from day one.”

Camenker called Jennings’ work the “landmark” speech on how to portray the promotion of homosexuality as a “safety” issue in order to gain favor in the eye of the public.

Said Jennings, “Finding the effective frame for your community is the key to victory. It must be linked to universal values that everyone in the community has in common. In Massachusetts, no one could speak up against our frame and say, ‘Why, yes, I do think students should kill themselves’: this allowed us to set the terms for debate.”

MassResistance also has reported that it was Jennings’ group that in 2000 held a seminar for public school teens on the benefits of “fisting.” The group handed out a document called “The Little Black Book” to young teens, a pornographic homosexual how-to that includes a directory of

homosexual bars.

Jennings also has, according to a report from Americans for Truth, condemned the “religious right” with an obscene suggestion.

The report said Jennings, talking to a church audience in New York in 2000, said, “Twenty percent of people are hard-core fair-minded [pro-homosexual] people. Twenty percent are hard-core [anti-homosexual] bigots. 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 [of people in the middle] over to our side. That’s really what I think our strategy has to be. We have to quit being afraid of the religious right. We also have to quit — I’m trying to find a way to say this. I’m trying not to say, ‘[F—] ’em!’ which is what I want to say, because I don’t care what they think!”

Jennings strategy was so successful that his state’s governor’s “Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth” has brought homosexuality programs into schools throughout the state.

According to the MassResistance website, now parents are “astounded” that homosexual assemblies, plays, clubs, counseling sessions, books and other celebrations of a sexual lifestyle are for “safety.”

“In fact, none of these so-called suicide prevention programs have any legitimate medical or psychological basis. No one with actual credentials to deal with suicide, or even mainstream suicide-prevention groups such as the Samaritans, are ever involved. Yet, they’re dealing with vulnerable children. Upon examination, you see that all of these programs are simply put together by homosexual activists to normalize homosexuality in the minds of as many kids as possible – and if possible without any parental knowledge or consent,” the analysis says.

WND reported earlier when it became known that Jennings was appointed.

At the time, Linda Harvey of Mission America, which educates people on anti-Christian trends in the nation, said it is nothing less 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.

Jennings also wrote the foreword for a book called “Queering Elementary Education: Advancing the Dialogue about Sexualities and Schooling.”

 


Bob Unruh

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially. Read more of Bob Unruh's articles here.