You don’t have to look far to find criticism of Kevin Jennings, the president’s “safe school czar.” Google his name and your first result is Tony Perkin’s op-ed “Kevin Jennings — Unsafe for America’s Schools.” Second result? “OBAMA APPOINTEE KEVIN JENNINGS: FISTING AND ‘[F–k] ‘em’ to the ‘Religious Right.'” Most of the spin, naturally, comes from right-wing conservatives, who claim Jennings’ homosexual activist agenda does not make America’s schools safer. And then there’s the incident where, as a closeted 24-year-old school teacher, his advice to a 15-year-old student who told Jennings he was having sex with an older man was to “use a condom” — and not, say, “stop having sex with him.” This has provided ample ammunition to attack Jennings and Obama. And Jennings’ defenders don’t exactly have the best defense argument.
The latest attack on Jennings arrives in the Washington Times, a conservative newspaper geared toward attacking progressives. In an editorial, the newspaper goes after Jennings, who in 2000 told the Iowa chapter of GLSEN about the 15-year-old named “Brewster”:
According to Mr. Jennings’ own description in a new audiotape discovered by Fox News, the 15-year-old boy met the “older man” in a “bus station bathroom” and was taken to the older man’s home that night. When some details about the case became public, Mr. Jennings threatened to sue another teacher who called his failure to report the statutory rape “unethical.” Mr. Jennings’ defenders asserted that there was no evidence that he was aware the student had sex with the older man.
However, the new audiotape contradicts this claim. In 2000, Mr. Jennings gave a talk to the Iowa chapter of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, an advocacy group that promotes homosexuality in schools. On the tape, Mr. Jennings recollected that he told the student to make sure “to use a condom” when he was with the older man. That he actively encouraged the relationship is reinforced by Mr. Jennings’ own description in his 1994 book, “One Teacher in 10.” In that account, the teacher boasts how he allayed the student’s concerns about the relationship to such a degree that the 15-year-old “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.”
The Times goes after him for showing a lack of remorse. But the real source of the attacks, claims blogger and onetime Margaret Thatcher adviser David Hart, is Jennings’ sexuality. Says Hart: “The reason that they are attacking Jennings is simple; He is gay. Furthermore, the right wing is doing anything that they can to undermine President Obama. They ar[e] trying to get Obama to terminate Jennings as a desperate show of (waning) force.”
Okay, let’s try to get a little less generic:
How about we take this to the next level?
Our newsletter is like a refreshing cocktail (or mocktail) of LGBTQ+ entertainment and pop culture, served up with a side of eye-candy.
The incident that the Washington Times cites occurred in 1989 when Jennings was 24 years old and a closeted high school teacher in Massachusetts. A 15 year-old teen, “Brewster,” confided in Jennings that he had sex with an older man in a bus depot restroom. The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16. Technically, Jennings had an obligation to notify law enforcement. Had he done so, he would have exposed the boy’s sexuality — keep in mind that this was 20 years ago. The teen would have been subjected to some very embarrassing questions like what he was doing at the depot in the first place. Furthermore, this would have undermined Jennings’ ability to get students to confide in him.It was a difficult judgment call.
[…] Ultimately, there is nothing “Problematic” about Mr. Jennings. Nor does this depict any flaws in the vetting process. Mr. Jennings graduated magna cum laude from Harvard. He became a high school history teacher after graduation. He became the faculty advisor to the nation’s first gay-Straight Alliance. He was a Joseph Kingenstein Fellow at Columbia University, where he received his M.A. Kevin earned an M.B.A. from NYU’s Stern School of Business. He has authored six books and helped write and produce the documentary Out of the Past, which won the 1998 Sundance Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary. In his “spare time,” Kevin founded GLSEN.He is a highly accomplished individual who is entirely qulaified for the position he holds.
Alas, none of this qualifies as a reasonable defense. If Jennings “technically” had a legal obligation to report the incident, he should have. His CV is impressive, and sounds like it qualifies him for the “safe school czar” job under Obama. But it’s an insufficient answer to why, as a teacher to young people, he did not attempt to intervene to stop an underage boy from continuing an unhealthy sexual relationship — and keep that boy from becoming a victim.
And until he, or his supporters, can adequately answer that question, the attacks will keep coming. Actually, they will anyhow.
Jason
Fake Obama Czars Controversy = RIGHTWING NUTJOB FAIL.
Note, teabaggers, that your boy, W, had more “czars” than Obama: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._executive_branch_czars#By_administration
But why let things like “facts” and “reality” get in the way?
Mwah!
Jerrold
The only way to convince that boy to stop would have been to make a semantic argument that it was wrong, which is difficult with a teenager. We don’t know if he was a week past 14 or a week from 16 – a huge difference when the law is 16.
Telling the student what he did was wrong and/or reporting it to the police only puts him on trial as the victim, which he likely wasn’t. “Older” when you are 15 is a pretty relative term, right? A 17 or 18 year old would be an older man, right?
This is SILLY!!!
AlwaysGay
Heterosexuals ALWAYS fallback on sex when trying to undermine gay people. Sex plus gay people means a lot of bad things to the haterosexual. So even if it has nothing to do with sex the haterosexual will trot out sex and try to connect it to gay people because it will automatically sway other haterosexuals into believing them.
eilismaura
What vetting process did he go thru?
What has he done since to try to help teens not get into inappropriate situations (like providing sex to strange adults in bus stop bathrooms)?
Mr. Enemabag Jones
He should have never told the story in any way shape or form in the first place.
QueerToday
Kevin Jennings is a good man who does good work. He did the right thing by following risk reduction methods of meeting a person “where they are at,” talking to them, and figuring things out in a sex-positive, assuring manor.
reluctantcommenter
maybe i’m hyper liberal…but i agree it was a difficult situation, and i believe he was doing what he thought was best to mitigate the situation. i can accept that. and people coming from a heterosexist point of view will never accept it. done and done.
Kyle24
if Kevin Jennings is smart enough to have all the accomplishments he has i would think he would be smart enough to know sex between a minor and an adult is wrong. I wish we had some clarification on the age of the “older” man. was he 18? 19? 25? 30? If the older man was a legal adult over 20 then i have more of an issue than if he was still a teen.
a. mcewen
Interesting way folks are trying to distract from the issue. These folks do in fact oppose Jennings because of his orientation and they have dug up to their elbows to find an issue to bring him down.
But there may be one flaw – Jennings didn’t actually see anything. That could weigh much into the claim that he agreed with the encounter. Also was it a relationship or a one time thing? It doesn’t sound like anything but an unfortunate one time thing. But a lot seems to be lost in translation.
hephaestion
All Jennings needs to do is say “If this happened today I would handle it differently” and the whole situation is defused as far as all sane people are concerned.
That’s what Republicans do and it works like a charm for them. Look at the Republican candidate for governor of Virginia. That’s what he did.
GimmeABreak
He needs to fill in the details of this story. If he can’t recognize that the specific details of this event are important then he doesn’t exhibit good judgment today.
TheBigotBasher
I have covered this on my blog but quite simply this is the Moonie Times and Faux News generating a scandal.
Jennings is gay. That is reason enough for every bigot group in the Country targeting him and the Washington Times has just sent out some red meat.
A student of his, aged 15, told Jennings that he had sex with an older man in a bus depot restroom. The age of consent in Massachusetts is 16. No age of this “older man” is given, 16, 17, 20, 30 or 40. No details of how old this 15 year old will be provided by fox. 15 years and a day, or 15 years and 364 days. Technically it makes no difference if the older man was 16 and the 15 year old was 15 and 364 days. Most Republicans would however accept a sexual relationship between 15 year old nearing his sixteenth birthday and a girl of 16 or even 20. The homosexual nature of this will allow for no mitigation.
Although people may wish that teenagers are not sexually active, the fact remains they are. Jennings had however gained the trust of the boy. Trust he would have lost had he reported that to the police. In 1989, America was a very homophobic place to be. (Still is in may ways). In part encouraged by the rise of the religious right. Had Jennings have gone to the police, he would have outed the boy at school.
Coming out is a difficult experience in itself. Being forced out by a teacher you trusted would have been devastating.
It would also have completely undermined the ability of Jennings to gain the trust of any of his pupils.
To say the least, notifying the authorities or ensuring the trust of your pupils would have been a difficult call. I say he got it right.
Think back to 1989, when HIV was a real death sentence. (I would have been a similar age to the “child” in question). That one bit of advice, use a condom, given his high risk sexual activities, probably saved his life if he listened to it. Would that advice have been given equal standing if Jennings had betrayed the trust of his pupil?
None of the truth really matters though. Watch Fox News and the right twist this. I fear we will cave on this, just as Van Jones and Acorn and give their baying hounds some more red meat.
Danny
That Wikipedia article is a great reference. It actually shows Obama has more czars in less than 9 months than Bush had in 8 years. Also note how many Bush czars were vetted by the Senate as opposed to Obama. Nice article. @Jason:
Absolute Legal
Unless he knew the identity of the alleged adult who was allegedly involved, he had no legal, moral or ethical obligation to inform anyone of anything. End of story.
Garbage of any Queerty ‘writer’ to opine otherwise.
Jack
Jennings used bad judgement in his advice. 15 is an odd age for a young man…the body functions as an adult, but the judgement process is still being molded. I agree that Jennings should have kept this incident to himself. On the political front, the Obama Administration did a shoddy job of vetting.
bill984
” We don’t know if he was a week past 14 or a week from 16 – a huge difference when the law is 16.”
actually no, the law is 16, not 15 1/2 or 15yrs 51 weeks.
stop trying to justify the fact that a) it was against the law
and b) jennings covered it up.
TheBigotBasher
@bill984: Jennings didn’t break a trust and out a child at school; a bit different from “covering it up”.
Jake
@AllDixR4Chix:
We don’t speak with terrorists. Go away.
jason
A lot of these right-wing retards promote lesbianism in men’s magazines. Fox News often features lesbians in its website.
As lesbianism is a form of homosexuality, a case can be made that right-wingers are hypocrites.
Michael BIlly
http://michaelbilly.com/blog.html
“It’s embarrassing that elected officials see children’s lives as a political opportunity and a chance to get their fifteen minutes on a pundit show. This isn’t about Jennings, this is bigotry and ignorance masked in politics.” -Michael Billy
Kevin Jennings treated me as his protégé. Jennings took me under his wing and prepared me for a life of service at the age of 16. I’ve been lecturing at colleges and high schools for over ten years now solely due to the educational principals and standards taught to me by Kevin. The responsibility we have as adults, teachers, and members of a society to protect our children and give them the best chance at a healthy successful life. What happened to me as a child is a direct result of what can happen in an unsafe school environment. It’s exactly the type of behavior we can expect more often when we don’t embrace a school system that protects all children.
If you define the “homosexual agenda” as an agenda that promotes a safe school environment for ALL students regardless of their sexuality…then yes, I support the homosexual agenda along with Kevin. Kevin Jennings has my full support as our School Safety Czar. I have seen first- hand the young lives Kevin has saved from suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse. It’s embarrassing that elected officials see children’s lives as a political opportunity and a chance to get their fifteen minutes on a pundit show. This isn’t about Jennings, this is bigotry and ignorance masked in politics. While the rest of the country was playing catch up with their policies Kevin Jennings was forced to make tough decisions on how to handle children on the brink of destruction with nowhere to turn. While statistics have shown a strong correlation between suicide and being a GLBT student, one would think we would applaud someone with such a strong back ground in GLBT issues. I can only hope that if any of these republicans have gay kids, that those kids have someone like Kevin in their classroom.
-Michael Billy
Michael Billy began his journey to Washington when GLSEN’s Kevin Jennings was the featured keynote speaker at a school safety conference. Jennings approached Michael after hearing him speak. “He took me aside and said, ‘you just may be the first gay President.’” The two traveled together to visit the Attorney General several months later. While in Washington, Jennings and Billy attended a conference on school safety at the White House as well as spoke at the national vigil for Matthew Shepard.
At age 14, a gang of fifteen (15) high school students brutally assaulted Michael in front of his school. “There goes the faggot!” one of the gang yelled, while another student threw Michael against a fence, still others carried him off and tried to stuff him in a garbage can. “Kill the faggot!” they screamed. Michael eventually escaped and later filed hate crime charges.
Billy, a New Jersey native, has become a national leader for gay and lesbian youth and is an ardent advocate for an end to homophobia. He was invited by President and Mrs. Clinton to attend the White House Conference on School Safety. While there, Michael met with Attorney General Janet Reno to discuss the need for federal hate crime laws.
Michael has appeared on or has been interviewed by CNN NewsStand, The Advocate, MTV, The Leeza Gibbons Show, Fresh Air, WHYY-FM, XY magazine, MSNBC, CNN, The Ricki Lake Show, and Frontiers Newsmagazine (which included him in its 1999 “Hometown Heroes” special issue.) Michael received the Equality Award from the Human Rights Campaign (1999) and the Sue Anne Big Crow Award for civil rights and education from the National Education Association (2000.)
From hospitalizations, drug and alcohol abuse to becoming a national television and radio personality. Billy uses humor to talk about his self destruction, recovery and rise to the top.
Michael Billy is best known as the host of the three (3) time Emmy-nominated show “In The Life” on PBS from 2007 to 2009. “In The Life” airs in over 75 million homes in every major market across the US. The lovable boy next door brings his often dark and quirky sense of humor to national radio every morning on “The Me and Vinnie Show,” weekdays 6 AM to 9AM EST. on the Stars Too channel on Sirius 108 / XM 139.
nobama
Stop this pervert from influencing our children.
ExtremeCentrist
The point isn’t that Jennings is gay. So what if he’s gay? The point is poor judgment, first by Jennings and now by the White House.
Regardless of sexual preferences, Jennings and his defenders should recognize that any adult participating in anonymous sex with a minor presents an inherent and unacceptable danger to the child. Most parents know this instinctively. As “School Safety Czar”, this is the only appropriate context to discuss the bus station incident.
The White House surely recognized this potential controversy when they appointed Jennings. This begs the question why they would select Jennings over seemingly better-qualified candidates, unless there is some less-than-explicit agenda at work.
is it paranoia to observe Jennings’ emminent qualifications to expand discussions of sexuality in classrooms?
Like many people, I’m ok with most individual choices. Just don’t expect me or my children to pay or be forced to participate. Respect my choices too.
Spratico
What about Jennings instructing kids in the act of ‘fisting’???
You people are really sick!
FrankO
This Jennings guy at least has shown the queer communities real colors. They are beyond sick. They think evil is good and good is evil.
FrankO
The homos biggest mistake was going after our children. This appointment just proves that it is no conspiracy to brainwash and confuse our children. I was all for the gays just leaving it in their bedrooms but they wanted to throw it in our face and now our children’s face. Most gays I know where raped as children by the same sex and this is the gay agenda folks. Misery loves company.
Jimmy Mack
It would really be better if Barack Obama allowed Kevin Jennings to demonstrate fisting on him and provide a DVD of both of them engaged with the fisting kit .
kNOw Jesus kNOw peace
Easy to say Bush had more Czars than Obama but the facts are Bush had 14 at the conclusion of his presidency. during his 8 years some positions were temporary (ie. Bird Flu czar) some were filled more than once so his TOTAL appointments were a couple more than the 34 that Obama has appointed during his first year in office. Apples with Apples, OK?