At The Presidents Pleasure

[bonnie]

http://sweetness-light.com/archive/safe-school-czar-ignored-statutory-rape

‘Safe School Czar’ Ignored Statutory Rape

An editorial from the Washington Times

Kevin Jennings, founder of the New York city-based Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, poses for a photograph by New York’s PS 41 in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008.

At the president’s pleasure

Monday, September 28, 2009

A teacher was told by a 15-year-old high school sophomore that he was having homosexual sex with an "older man." At the very least, statutory rape occurred. Fox News reported that the teacher violated a state law requiring that he report the abuse. That former teacher, Kevin Jennings, is President Obama’s "safe school czar."

It’s getting hard to keep track of all of this president’s problematic appointments. Clearly, the process for vetting White House employees has broken down.

In this one case in which Mr. Jennings had a real chance to protect a young boy from a sexual predator, he not only failed to do what the law required but actually encouraged the relationship.

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."

Mr. Jennings’ denials about these events reveal a lack of remorse. He has not admitted that he made mistakes in this case, and he now refuses to answer any questions about the scandal. Don’t forget, this is a presidential appointee we’re talking about. Mr. Obama should make clear what his standards are for public servants serving at the pleasure of the president. Encouraging and covering up man-boy sexual activity are serious offenses. The White House should force Mr. Jennings to come clean.

Mr. Jennings has made extremely radical statements promoting homosexuality in schools and about his utter contempt for religion that render him unsuitable for a prestigious White House appointment. His job in the Obama administration is to ensure student safety, and this scandal directly calls into question his ability to perform that job. Mr. Jennings and Obama administration officials refuse to answer any questions about this newly discovered evidence. A lot of Americans want answers about this guy and how he was approved for a job in the White House.

Of course the real scandal here is that Mr. Jennings was ever appointed Mr. Obama’s ‘Safe School Czar’ in the first place.

Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, provided some other details in Human Events back in June:

Kevin Jennings — Unsafe for America’s Schools

Few Obama administration appointments have been as startling as Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s appointment of Kevin Jennings, the homosexual founder of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), to head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools.

Jennings was undoubtedly chosen for this post (which does not require Senate confirmation) because the foundation of the homosexual education agenda is the concept of “safe schools.” However, “safe schools” as GLSEN defines them are like “hate crime laws” for kids. GLSEN’s model legislation would create protected categories like “sex, gender, . . . sexual orientation, [and] gender identity or expression.” … GLSEN’s “safe schools” do not protect everyone equally, but instead single out homosexuals for more protection than others.

Despite this inequity, some might be tempted to support the “safe schools” agenda as long as it is limited to ending bullying, and does not extend to actively affirming or promoting homosexuality. However, in a 1995 speech, Jennings admitted that the rhetoric about “safety” was a political device, saying that it “threw our opponents on the defensive, and stole their best line of attack. This framing short-circuited their arguments and left them back-pedaling.” In a 1997 speech he embraced the idea of actively “promoting” homosexuality, looking forward to a day when “people, when they would hear that someone was promoting homosexuality, would say, ‘Yeah, who cares?’” And an unsigned article on the GLSEN website in 2000 declared, “The pursuit of safety and affirmation are one and the same goal.”

While Jennings promotes tolerance toward homosexuals, he is unwilling to reciprocate by extending tolerance to those who disagree with him. His memoir, Mama’s Boy, Preacher’s Son, seethes with bitterness toward Southern Baptists, the country’s largest Protestant denomination (within which he was raised). Perhaps that’s why, in a speech in a New York church in 2000, Jennings is reported to have said, “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, because I don’t care what they think! Drop dead!”

He wants homosexuality to be taught in American schools — in his book Always My Child, Jennings calls for a “diversity policy that mandates including LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender] themes in the curriculum.” But he wants only one side of this controversial issue to be aired, and apparently believes in locking sexually confused kids into a “gay” identity…

Jennings does not limit his promotion of homosexuality in schools only to high schools or middle schools. He wrote the foreword for a book titled Queering Elementary Education, which includes an essay declaring that “‘queerly raised’ children are agents” using “strategies of adaptation, negotiation, resistance, and subversion.”

Perhaps the most dramatic illustration, however, of Jennings’ unfitness for a “safe schools” post involves an incident when he taught at Concord Academy, a private boarding school in Massachusetts. In his book One Teacher in Ten (the title is based on the discredited myth, now abandoned even by “gay” activist groups, that ten percent of the population is homosexual), he tells about a young male sophomore, “Brewster,” who confessed to Jennings “his involvement with an older man he met in Boston.” But at a GLSEN rally in 2000, Jennings told a more explicit version of “Brewster’s” story. Jennings here quotes the boy and then comments: “‘I met someone in the bus station bathroom and I went home with him.’ High school sophomore, 15 years old. That was the only way he knew how to meet gay people.”

Did Jennings report this high-risk behavior to the authorities? To the school? To the boy’s parents? No — he just told the boy, “I hope you knew to use a condom.” Sex between an adult and a young person below the “age of consent” (which varies from state to state) is a crime known as statutory rape, and some states mandate that people in certain professions report such abuse.

I do not know if “Brewster” was below the age of consent, nor whether Jennings was a mandatory reporter or violated mandatory reporting laws. When members of the National Education Association protested an NEA award to Jennings because of this incident, Jennings called the criticism “potentially libelous” and a GLSEN lawyer demanded a retraction. But when officials at Concord Academy — the school where Jennings had taught — were asked about the scenario described in one of Jennings’ accounts, a school spokesman said that such an incident should be reported.

In any case, public service requires adherence to a higher ethical standard than bare compliance with the law. Instead of veiled threats, Jennings now owes the public a thorough explanation of the “Brewster” incident. Regardless of the law, a 15-year-old who meets sexual partners in a bus station restroom requires more than a condom to be “safe.”

Kevin Jennings has neither the temperament nor the ethical standards needed for public service. His history suggests a commitment to serving only one narrow part of the student population, not all students. He is unfit for the post to which he’s been assigned, and Secretary Duncan should withdraw his appointment at once.

Note that the ‘statutory rape’ incident was already well known at the time of Mr. Jennings appointment. Probably it was seen as a feather in his cap.

Still, one is forced to wonder.

Doesn’t Mr. Obama know anyone who is even slightly normal and law-abiding?

[bonnie]

HEY BONNIE

THIS is really bad

dgrimm60

For those that will say it is biased you can find a lot more on the internet

[Ted Oplinger]

Strange bedfellows it makes of those who repudiate Godly morality, and those afraid of the Religious Right...

[bonnie]

Strange bedfellows it makes of those who repudiate Godly morality, and those afraid of the Religious Right...

Every person that he maintained a relationship with,or those he considered mentors,spiritual mentor as well is extremely radical and with a ideology that one does not expect in the president of the US.

There doesnt seem to be what most would consider any of his associations as normal.

No one can surround himself from childhood on with radical misfits and communists without being of like mind.

[Dr. Shane]

This is very disappointing. I don't think Reverend Wright would approve.

[Ted Oplinger]

This is very disappointing. I don't think Reverend Wright would approve.

...Because the guy was caught???

Perhaps the "Safe School" Czar can plead the Roman Polansky plea... it was so long ago, and no one was hurt, and I could see anything wrong with it...

[bonnie]

Originally Posted By: Shane

This is very disappointing. I don't think Reverend Wright would approve.

...Because the guy was caught???

Perhaps the "Safe School" Czar can plead the Roman Polansky plea... it was so long ago, and no one was hurt, and I could see anything wrong with it...

What is disappointing is the lack of concern over who these people have shown themselves to be.

Maybe it is felt that being part of Obama's admin will absolve them of all.

What is not only disappointing but down right scary what and who our president is willing and eager to place in positions of power and trust.

Shane,I would think Rev Wright would give Obama a A+ for who is has placed and is trying to place in power.