Didn’t Fox News just issue a clarification about their misreporting on Kevin Jennings? Funny, ’cause Sean Hannity is now pushing a very obvious idiot logic argument that connects Jennings to pedophile group NAMBLA — an argument that lies in Jennings once voicing support for mostly awesome gay activist Harry Hay. That’s a scarlet letter for Jennings to wear, you see, because Hay once advocated for including NAMBLA in gay pride parades. Gross, yes, but that doesn’t mean Jennings supports pedophilia. Scare tactics are fun.
And meanwhile, aren’t there more ways to attack Jennings. Like, say, pulling the race card when criticizing opponents of gay-oriented schools?
Larry
Pretty soon, we’ll start seeing postings on various Web sites that Jennings himself is a pedophile who says it’s okay to fuck 15yo boys, as long as he has a condom.
Harrison
Larry, you must not get on Twitter much. That’s all they’re saying; I’ve been bickering about it with conservatives for the last couple of days.
The way the right-wing propaganda machine can control these people is truly frightening.
Stef
Ok, I totally don’t believe Jennings supports being a ped, however, to play devil’s advocate – how many times has Queerty done pieces where anti-gay goverment officials are also seen shmoozing white supremacists or people known to be connected to SPLC certified hate groups.
Tit for tat. NAMBLA is gross, and, in my opinion, is NOT connected to the LGBT movement at all. I think Hays’ push to try to connect the two was a total setback for the LGBT movement, and a card a lot of the anti-gay retards look to play. I can’t fault them for using it here, because there is nothing good, NOTHING good whatsoever, about NAMBLA. So we either gotta wear the loss for this one, or, we gotta stop using things like anti-gay figueheads being seen with racist organization figureheads to OUR advantage. Because just like Jennings’ support of Hays doesn’t make him a pedo or a supporter of pedos, you could argue the same that an anti-gay’s support of a supremacist doesn’t necessarily make him a racist, either.
alan brickman
kinda a bit of a reach even for the sleezys..
roger
larry, GREAT use of sarcasm! unintelligent minds clearly don’t get it.
mr. jennings, please tell van jones i said hello. because it’s only a matter of time. deservedly!
Rob
“That’s a scarlet letter for Jennings to wear, you see, because Hay once advocated for including NAMBLA in gay pride parades.”
Harry Hay’s link to NAMBLA is just a bit tighter than the above sentence implies — as documented in photos and transcripts on NAMBLA’s *own website*, Hay was a featured speaker at several NAMBLA events in NYC over the span of at least a decade, from the early ’80s through the early ’90s.
Mind you, it’s not necessarily the case that Hay himself was a pedophile. Possibly his repeated support for NAMBLA was based on having once been a horny teenaged “DILF” chaser way back in the 1920s…
…combined with a hugely romanticized understanding of pagan Greek pederasty…
…combined with the awesomely bad political judgment of someone who remained a fervently in-denial American Communist long after the truth came out about Stalin’s genocides…
…combined with a lifelong radical’s inability to resist ANY “shock the bourgeoisie” photo-op.
Or, then again, maybe Hay actually did yearn to bugger little boys.
But in any case, Hay’s involvement with NAMBLA was neither a one-time thing, nor rooted in some purely abstract belief in queer inclusiveness — he lent his name and his time to the group again and again. And whitewashing this unsavory truth about the man, simply because of his “Founding Father” status, does no gay person any favors.
On the contrary, if you believe (as some have argued) that Jennings may not have known about Hay’s NAMBLA involvement at all — because some of the less-in-depth bios and obits of Hay politely ignore this part of his life — then it’s especially important not to participate in the whitewashing, which only sets up other gay people to embarrass themselves by speaking too well of Hay.
Rob
“…combined with a lifelong radical’s inability to resist ANY “shock the bourgeoisie” photo-op.”
How radical was Hay? According to one of the gay historians who is quoted in the article about Hay at wikipedia, Hay disparaged ACT UP as “gay assimilationists”! Yes, *that* ACT UP, of cathedral-raiding fame. Just try to wrap your mind around that for a few seconds.
Apparently, the headline-grabbing, direct-confrontation tactics of ACT UP struck Hay as an attempt to imitate straight-dude machismo — and thus such tactics were, in his mind, “assimilationism.”
Manny
Judge a man by the company he keeps?
The publisher of Kevin Jennings’ first 3 books, Alyson Publications, published pro-pedophilia books. See Americans for Truth, http://americansfortruth.com/news/breaking-obama-safe-schools-chief-kevin-jennings-used-pro-pedophile-pro-nambla-publisher-for-first-two-books.html
MassResistance reveals that Alyson also publishes raunchy porn. http://massresistance.blogspot.com/2009/10/kevin-jennings-harry-hay-and.html
Zombietime proves that Jennings was aware of Harry Hay’s connections with NAMBLA when he praised him in 1997. http://www.zombietime.com/zomblog/?p=990
sophs
The way you can defend an intolerant “safe schools” czar that has a frighteningly pornographic book list for our kids is the only thing here that is “frightening.” Mark my words, he’ll slither out of the White House on a Sunday and Obama will deny knowing how much of an extremist Jennings is. Nobody cares that he’s gay. We care that he’s a danger in the classroom because of his X-rated recommended books list.
FakeName
Hey sophs, how many books on Jennings’ list have you personally read?
ericka v.
Read excerpts of the books. Jennings is everything your mother told you to avoid and most anyone who reads these book titles much less the books, will come away with the impression there is an agenda for school children.
Sugar coat it all you want, that is the fact staring back at you.
Harrison
Or better yet, Ericka V., you could read the books in their entirety, rather than allow your complete ignorance of queer theory and the issues it attempts to address make you shortsightedly think that there’s some sinister agenda.
What problems, specifically, do you have with Jennings’ books? Which titles seem scary to you? Which insidious out-of-context passages have you read posted on FreeRepublic?