Tag Archives: Kevin Jennings

News

Meet Obama’s school-safety and employment diversity czars

2 Comments

First, consider Obama’s school safety czar. (H/T The Weekly Standard via ECM)

Excerpt:

The Van Jones flameout was spectacular, but keep watching for the Kevin Jennings conflagration, which could be just as brilliant. Jennings’s June appointment as Obama’s school-safety czar was greeted by the vast right-wing conspiracy with some outrage, as members of its bullying anti-gay homophobic ranks who’ve been following his career for years turned up info on some sketchy aspects of his past. And it seems there’s more back there than just the saga of youthful error — when, as a 24-year-old closeted gay teacher he urged a teenaged student to be sure to use a condom when having sex with an older man — that’s been making the rounds and giving Media Matters the vapors for the last few days.

For instance, there’s his encomium of Harry Hay, architect of the Mattachine Society (about which read here), fellow-traveler of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, and author, among other things, of this gob-smacking passage: “. . . if the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world. And they would be welcoming this, and welcoming the opportunity for young gay kids to have the kind of experience that they would need.”

And what does Jennings think of Harry Hay? Well, consider his speech to GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network, of which he was the founder and executive director.

One of the people that’s always inspired me is Harry Hay . . . . Everybody thought Harry Hay was crazy in 1948 . . . and they were right, he was crazy. . . . All of us who are thinking this way are crazy, because you know what? Sane people keep the world the same sh*tty old way it is now. It’s the people who think, ‘No, I can envision a day when straight people say, ‘So what if you’re promoting homosexuality?’ . . . And think how much can change in one lifetime if in Harry Hay’s one very short life, he saw change from not even one person willing to join him to a million people willing to travel to Washington to join him.

Now let’s look at Obama’s nominee for Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner. (H/T Jennifer Roback Morse)

Excerpt:

A law professor nominated by President Obama to become a commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was a signatory to a radical 2006 manifesto which endorsed polygamous households and argued traditional marriage should not be privileged “above all others.”

Georgetown University Law Center professor Chai R. Feldblum, nominated as a commissioner for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), is listed as a signatory to the July 26, 2006 manifesto “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families & Relationships.”

The manifesto’s signatories said they proposed a “new vision” for governmental and private recognition of “diverse kinds” of partnerships, households and families. They said they hoped to “move beyond the narrow confines of marriage politics” in the U.S.

Describing various kinds of households as no less socially, economically, and spiritually worthy than other relationships, the Beyond Marriage manifesto listed “committed, loving households in which there is more than one conjugal partner.”

Same-sex marriage, the manifesto said, should be “just one option on a menu of choices that people have about the way they construct their lives.”

“Marriage is not the only worthy form of family or relationship, and it should not be legally and economically privileged above all others,” the manifesto continued. “While we honor those for whom marriage is the most meaningful personal ­– for some, also a deeply spiritual – choice, we believe that many other kinds of kinship relationship, households, and families must also be accorded recognition.”

The manifesto listed as one of its principles “freedom from a narrow definition of our sexual lives and gender choices, identities, and expression.”

It also charged that the political right enforces “narrow, heterosexist definitions of marriage.”

Wow. Why did so many Christians vote for Obama? He clearly does not believe that traditional marriage is best for children. Did you know that he is trying to get the Defense of Marriage Act overturned? Obama doesn’t believe that children need a biological-linked mother and father to raise them in a stable marriage. I guess he is not familiar with the reasons why social conservatives discourage same-sex marriage, cohabitation or single-mother households?

Share

News

Are teacher unions interested in helping your children to succeed in life?

1 Comment

This is a great article from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Club for Growth)

Excerpt:

In her weekly “What Matters Most” newspaper column, Randi Weingarten recently bid the Big Apple farewell. Ms. Weingarten has been elevated to president of the national American Federation of Teachers from head of its New York City affiliate, and she had some notable parting words: “One of the most rewarding (and exhausting) things about working in public education in New York City is that it is the best laboratory in the world for trying new things.”

Well, it could be, if it weren’t for Ms. Weingarten’s union. Since taking over in 1998, she has done everything she could to block significant reforms to New York’s public schools. Take her opposition to charter schools. She resisted raising the state cap on charters from 100 unless the union could organize them. (She lost and the cap now is 200.)

Ms. Weingarten was also against merit pay for individual teachers. She supported a law that bars school districts from linking teacher tenure to student test scores. In return for even the mildest pension reforms, Ms. Weingarten recently won a concession that teachers no longer need to work on the two days before the start of the school year. Meanwhile, she has fought to ensure that the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool keeps allowing teachers whom no principal wants to hire to receive their full salaries. New York spends an estimated $150 million on this and on Teacher Reassignment Centers (for instructors who have been accused of misconduct) alone.

Speaking of money, Ms. Weingarten has long been among the union leaders claiming that more cash will fix public education. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has paid for the modest reforms he’s been able to implement by increasing spending to $22 billion from $13 billion, much of that in teacher salaries. The four-year high school graduation rate in New York City is now 56%. In union politics, results like these are how you win a promotion to national leadership.

I blogged before about the NYC teachers removed from their duties who are still being paid.

But there’s more to it than that. My Christian readers should also be aware that teacher’s unions, like most unions (but not all!), are also very interested in promoting left-wing, anti-family social programs. (Weingarten herself is openly gay)

If you missed my post about Obama’s appointment of a gay activist to be the director of “safe schools”, check it out here.

The take-home lesson for you is not to vote for Democrats just because they say they will spend more money on education. What Democrats really mean is that they will spend more money on teacher’s unions, so that the teachers can turn around and advocate for leftist policies, like abortion and same-sex marriage, using union dues.

News

FRC opposes Obama’s school safety nominee

3 Comments

Democrat President Barack Obama has nominated Kevin Jennings to head the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools.

The Family Research Council has issued a press release announcing their disapproval. I found it linked at Muddling Towards Maturity.

Excerpt:

As the former president of the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, Mr. Jennings worked tirelessly to bring the homosexual agenda into our nation’s classrooms, even in grades as young as kindergarten. In addition, in his autobiography, Mr. Jennings expresses no regret about his past drug abuse or recognition of its risks. Instead, he seems amused. In his words, “[W]atching the planes take off and land is actually quite fun when you are drunk and stoned.”

Jennings has spoken publicly about a high school student he once counseled who was in a sexual relationship with an older man he met in a bus station – yet Jennings never reported this abuse to the authorities, the school, or the child’s parents.

Muddling linked to the FRC’s ad here.

How could Christians vote for Obama?

It might be worth reflecting for a moment on who put Obama into office. (Source: First Things)

Should Christians have voted for Obama?
Should Christians have voted for Obama?

I’m sure that many of these Christians (?) voted for Obama because they didn’t like spending 550 billion dollars on two wars to protect America from Islamic fascism while liberating people living in dictatorships. Or maybe because they didn’t see how taxing the greedy rich could be bad. Or maybe they thought that Obama was pro-life and pro-family regardless of his actual voting record.

Ideas have consequences. Elections matter.

UPDATE: Whoa! Just noticed this story at Pamela Geller’s blog. It turns out that Jennings is worse than described by the FRC! Warning: the link describes extreme sexual practices supported by Jennings.