Kevin Jennings Took High School Students to Radical 1993 Gay Rights March on DC – Part II

See Part I here.

What new ideas and experiences did Kevin Jennings' high school students encounter at the 1993 gay rights march on Washington? Check out some videos from the event here (includes ACT UP), here (mass commitment ceremony), and here.

It was the first major national event to push ”bisexuality” and “transgender rights” alongside “gay rights”. The 1993 platform also pushes the notion of “youth” rights, and loosening the sexual age-of-consent laws. Excerpts from the platform:

1. We demand passage of a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender civil rights bill and an end to discrimination by state and federal governments including the military; repeal of all sodomy laws and other laws that criminalize private sexual expression between consenting adults.... Passage and implementation of graduated age-of-consent laws.

3. ... The recognition and legal protection of the whole range of family structures. ... An end to abuse and exploitation of and discrimination against youth. ... Full implementation of the recommendations contained in the report of the Health and Human Services Task Force on Youth Suicide. ... Legalization of same sex marriages.

4. ... Culturally inclusive Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Studies program; and information on abortion, AIDS/HIV, childcare and sexuality at all levels of education.

5. ... Unrestricted, safe and affordable alternative insemination.... That access to safe and affordable abortion and contraception be available to all people on demand, without restriction and regardless of age.

7. ... An end to economic injustice in this country and internationally. ... An end to consideration of gender dysphoria as a psychiatric disorder. ... An end to censorship.

A contemporary report* gives some idea of the sights and sounds confronting Jennings' high school students:

… drag queens blowing kisses, gay men with nipple rings parading in studded leather, "Dykes on Bikes" cruising down the avenues, and bare-breasted lesbians showering each other with lingering kisses.…

A review of the April 25 evening newscasts on ABC, CNN and NBC (CBS did not air a newscast that night) indicates that viewers saw a sanitized version that made the gay movement seem largely mainstream and respectable, just as march organizers had hoped….

The speakers at the post-march rally provided a stream of obscenities considered too vulgar for mainstream television. For example, a drag queen duo cracked a joke on stage about the military ban on homosexuals that was aired on C-SPAN. "They're afraid we will be demanding blowjobs in the shower," said one, "when it's blow dryers we want." Later, a master of ceremonies, praising the conspicuously absent Bill Clinton, told the throng, "I think we have a leader who is thinking with his heart and mind, and not just his penis." And at another point, a woman told the crowd that she'd like to "fuck" Hillary Clinton….

… a man dressed in a blonde wig, wearing a skimpy flag costume and high heels parading on stage…. a white man French-kissing a black man, and a shot of another man in a black mini-dress singing, "Queers Can Do It in the Army." …

Andrew Kopkind, an associate editor of the Nation who is gay … wrote … “In fact, despite the heat there were the inevitable leather chaps and harnesses, a fist-fuckers section and more bare-breasted lesbians. And a fair amount of drags sashayed down the avenues in high heels. But for the first time in the history of gay gala events, the media averted their eyes.”

… a master of ceremonies talking about "crotch politics," and a self-described "big dyke" comedienne who faked an orgasm on stage….

[A Queer Nation spokesman said] even groups like Queer Nation and ACT UP [to which Jennings belonged] made a conscious effort to dress inoffensively for the march.

A “gay marriage” website characterizes the 1993 March:

The interconnectedness of all social justice was a major theme in 1993. The stated demands condemned “racism and sexism, class bias, economic injustice and religious intolerance” as well as homophobia. The board of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People gave the march a full endorsement, which created the first direct tie between the gay rights and civil rights movements. It was also the first time that the event's title acknowledged the role of bisexuals in gay rights activism.

The “B” and “T” were officially added to the GLBT allied movement in 1993. Bisexuals and transgenders (including transsexuals) were given a huge platform for their mind- and body-bending demands. One speaker was a transsexual (“male-to-female”) attorney who told of the oppression married men face after sex-change operations:

Once a person with male genitalia is legally married to a female-genitaled person, they will remain legally married regardless of whether one has genitalia-altering surgery and it then becomes a de facto same-sex marriage. The state cannot force a divorce. The first time that I promoted this idea publically [sic], outside of the Transgender Law Conferences was in my platform speech at the 1993 march on Washington…. But many were forced to divorce and many others simply were divorced. In those cases, the fear of exposure often left the transgendered spouse to be fair game in the divorce settlement. Often children were involved, and the courts would only allow supervised visitation. [Emphasis added.]

 

AIDS Quilt [Photo: Smithsonian Institution]

The emotional wallop of the AIDS Quilt displayed on the Mall would surely have had a deep effect on Jennings’ students. A homosexual news service reported:

Over two million people, according to the Washington Police Dept., viewed the AIDS Memorial Quilt over the weekend of October 11-13, 1996 in Washington, D.C. This marked the first time the entire quilt, now at 45,000 panels, has been displayed since the National March on Washington for Gay and Lesbian Rights in April, 1993. … Among the vast numbers viewing the Quilt [in 1996] were 55,000 school children, each of whom had to get parental permission to participate in the visit which included an orientation to deal with the emotions they might experience or witness…. [Emphasis added.]

These are the sights and messages Kevin Jennings used to radicalize his Concord Academy students in 1993. He has surely carried these radical beliefs through his years as national director of GLSEN and to his current position as Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” in the U.S. Department of Education.

A 2005 article in Education Week confirms that Jennings and GLSEN continued the mission of turning high school students into radical political activists.

Recognizing gay students remains an emotional, politically charged issue. But Kevin Jennings isn't out to provoke shouting matches. Instead, he's quietly turning students into activists capable of changing schools on their own.

GLSEN hasn’t grown from a one-man to a 30-person organization with a $5 million annual budget by battling his opponents on sexual orientation issues.

Instead, he’s done something the civil rights movement taught him is much more effective: He’s turned students into activists…. (Samantha Stainburn, “Straight Talk,” Teacher Magazine, November 1, 2005.)

This fits right in with Obama’s community organizing approach to transforming the country. But while Obama's community activism manipulated adults, Jennings mastered the art of manipulating children. 

 

Kevin Jennings in 2005.

[Photo: Education Week]

*Alicia C. Shepard, Did the networks sanitize the gay rights march?
American Journalism Review, July 1, 1993. (Available at Amazon.com.)

Kevin Jennings Took High School Students to Radical 1993 Gay Rights March on DC - Part I

     [Part II here.]


It appears that Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” Kevin Jennings, took his high school students with him to the April 1993 “gay rights” march on Washington, D.C.

April 25, 1993 Gay Rights March on Washington [AP Photo]

At Equality Utah’s Allies Dinner on October 9, 2008, Kevin Jennings spoke with pride of his high school’s GSA (gay-straight alliance club) participating in the March for “Gay and Lesbian Rights.”  He shows a photo of them on the stage screen as he stands at the podium.

In that 2008 speech, Jennings refers of the murders of Matthew Shepard in 1998 and an eighth-grader in California earlier in 2008, both of which he blames on the “homophobia” he is combating. He then says (at 1 min. 10 secs.):

But I know that it won’t always be this way. I know that because of the young people I’ve been privileged to work with who’ve demonstrated the power of people to make a difference. [Jennings indicating photo on screen here.] This is my gay/straight alliance at the 1993 march on Washington for gay and lesbian rights. Those kids are now in their early 30’s. They have taken with them into their adulthood a belief that they can make a difference. And they are making a difference every single day. I know because 20 years ago I sat in my office and I had a young girl come up with a crazy idea [to start a gay/straight alliance club] and I saw it spread to 4,200 schools. I know because 15 years ago I sat in a state legislator’s office in Massachusetts and said, “We need a law in this state.” And now that law is in 11 states…. [Emphasis added.]

While this video snippet does not absolutely prove Jennings was with his Concord Academy students at the 1993 march, the context of his Equality Utah speech (see Part I) is the telling of his life story through these slides. It’s hard to imagine he would have missed this huge event. He was still teaching at Concord Academy that spring, and still acting as advisor to the GSA (gay/straight alliance). At a minimum, it’s safe to say he would have encouraged his students to attend the event. (Too bad no Senate confirmation hearing was required on his appointment so we could confirm such things.)

The D.C. field trip by Jennings’ GSA club is a prime example of his corruption of children. The video below exposes the obscene and radical character of the 1993 march. Note the topless women; the banner carried by Brookline (Mass.) High School students (at 3:00); the ACT UP banner at 3:27 (Jennings was an ACT UP member); the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence”; the guys singing (at 6:30) “God is a Dyke … she’ll make it on the floor with us.”

Also participating in the march from Massachusetts were GSA clubs from Phillips Academy Andover and Brookline High School. Jennings had co-founded GLSEN a few years before with a teacher at Phillips Academy.*

The march was organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), an extremely radical group that has long advocated same-sex marriage, lowering the age of sexual consent, transgender/transsexual “rights”, universal health care, decriminalization of prostitution, and sexual sadomasochism. One of its founders was porn promoter Frank Kameny (who apparently spoke at NAMBLA’s 1981 convention). NGLTF worked hand in hand with ACT UP (present at the 1993 march), and led a “town meeting” on how to “fight the right.” (Video clip here; see at 2:35-4:35.) 

NGLTF supports sexual sadomochism groups and presents “leather leadership awards.” Their director was the keynote speaker at a 2006 Leather Leadership Conference, where he reminisced: “I'm sure many of you remember in 1993, when President Clinton met with representatives our community, Billy Hileman from Pittsburgh wore a leather vest – what an uproar it caused.” In 2008, the NGLTF “Creating Change” conference included workshops emphasizing “sexual freedom” for youth, entitled “A Dialog with Youth: Talking about Sex and Sexual Freedom” and “Mentoring Queer Youth.”

The radicalism of NGLTF at the time of the 1993 “gay rights” march is evident in its official platform. It reveals not only radical sexual demands, but also a Marxist/socialist/statist mentality. The featured NGLTF speaker at the march challenged everyone to “fight the Right” and “match the power of the Christian supremacists.” The claim is that most citizens are “oppressed” and there is “ecomomic injustice” in the U.S. 

These are the ideas Kevin Jennings was pushing on his students. In his gay and lesbian history reader for high school and college students, Becoming Visible (1994), Jennings even published sanitized excerpts from the platform.

Fists are popular with the GLBT crowd... [Photo: Minnesota Historical Society]

See Part II of our report.

________

*[Kathy] Henderson also co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Independent School Teachers Network (later GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network) with Concord Academy’s Kevin Jennings in 1990....The GSA also sent a contingent to the 1993 March on Washington. Phillips Academy did not, however, let them carry any signs or banners with the school name. When they walked past the White House, Paczynska recalled, they chanted, “George [H.W.] Bush’s prep school won’t let us carry a sign!” Mombian.com, “Phillips Academy GSA: 20 Years of Friendship and Activism,” March 16, 2009.

Kevin Jennings’ GLSEN Pushing “Transgender Bathrooms” in Maine Schools

Kevin Jennings, Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar,” has played a key role in the nightmare plan to transgenderize restrooms in Maine’s schools. According to the Bangor Daily News, a GLSEN leader in Maine is a player in the push to end biology-based restrooms:

Representatives from several gay and lesbian rights groups participated in a Dec. 15 workshop with the [Maine Human Rights] commission on the guidelines. One of them was Peter Rees of the Downeast Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network [GLSEN] based in Ellsworth. Rees said people who oppose rights for transgender students — such as allowing them to use locker rooms with people who are biologically of the opposite sex — fear something “that just isn’t borne out in reality.”

“What do they think is going to happen?” asked Rees. “That boy who is identifying as a girl is not going to be displaying herself in a girls’ locker room. She’s going to be acting as much like a girl as possible and being very modest.”

“She” – meaning a boy – will be “acting … like a girl … and being very modest.” But wait! We thought we weren’t supposed to stereotype on the basis of gender!?How confusing!

GLSEN has been very influential in Maine. Check out the 2008 report by the “LGBT Youth Commission” to the Maine Governor, where GLSEN is listed as the authoritative source on what needs to be done in the schools.

Maine’s 2005 anti-discrimination law -- covering the essentially undefined revolutionary concepts “sexual orientation” and “gender identity or expression” --has opened the door to the horror of boys using girls’ restrooms and locker rooms (and vice versa), and playing on opposite-sex sports teams, in schools. Worse, we wrote in our recent report:

As MassResistance has consistently warned, this also opens the door for the discussion in schools of transgenderism and so-called "sex-change" operations for children, even as young as elementary school age. Assemblies and events introducing kids to these concepts have already been taking place in some high schools in Massachusetts.

And a GLSEN-Boston board member gave a talk in a third-grade classroom in Newton, Mass. about a student’s father who was transitioning to “become a woman” – without parental notification, of course.

 “Safe Schools Czar” Jennings was one of the masterminds of this insanity being foisted upon young children across the country. He founded GLSEN shortly after his participation in the 1987 gay march on Washington. He apparently also participated in the 1993 gay march on the capitol*, which was the first big event to push “gender identity” non-discrimination alongside “gay and lesbian rights” demands. (See the “Platform of the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation.”) One speaker at that 1993 march was a transsexual (“male-to-female”) attorney who told of the oppression married men face after sex-change operations.

Back to the Maine school bathrooms, WorldNetDaily reported (“Biology-based restrooms to be banned?”):

[GLAD attorney Mary] Bonauto has filed a brief with the [Maine Human Rights] commission that says the commission is acting properly in trying to deal with students' "identity" issues.

 "Practically speaking, making a transgender student with a female gender identity [a boy] use the boys' restroom would be stigmatizing and have a serious, negative, emotional consequence for the student as well. It would be no less stigmatizing for that student to have to use the boys' room than it would be for any non-transgender girl to be singled out and made to use the boys' room," she claims.

Bonauto suggests restroom usage should not be based on biology.

"Applying these rules, it is clear, for example, that an anatomy or biology-based rule for bathroom usage cannot be used to bar transgender students from using a facility consistent with their gender identity," Bonauto said.

… On the issue of sports, Bonauto supports rules that require the schools to open doors based on the students' sense of identity.

The Slippery Slope is real.

See also:

Press release by Christian Civic League of Maine (1-25-10).

GLAD (Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders) document targeting Maine’s school children, “Students' Rights in Maine” (lists GLSEN as resource in PDF).

________

*See Jennings’ Equality Utah speech (Part 3 at 1 min. 10 secs.) where he's showing slides of his life story, and bragging that his Concord Academy gay-straight alliance was at the march.

GLSEN Fistgate Student Magazine Reveals Sex-Obsessed and Sad Kids

At the Kevin Jennings’ GSLEN Fistgate conference in 2000, students produced a “zine” specially for the event. The cover reads:

We’ll Be Right Out

Special TeachOUT Conference Edition #2

Produced by Project 10 East and GLSEN/Boston

March 25, 2000

This was given out in the registration packet to all participants. Clearly, it was blessed by GLSEN and Project 10 East. Our volunteers saved their copies. You can view the entire publication here. 

The collection of ramblings, poems and prose shorts includes:

·      “an argument against the ten commandments”

·      a graphic sexual discussion of masturbation

·      a tale of heterosexual rape

·      many plaintive reflections on loneliness, confusion, and sadness

·      exhortations to political gay activism

Here are just a few excerpts (typos are in the originals):

++++++++++

Goal: Raise awareness and acceptance in my high school by becoming more active and visible. I plan on taking my boyfriend to the prom and going with my friends to show them that we are here and I’m not afraid to show them who I care about and that I am happy.

++++++++++

SEX!

As most teenagers know, we can’t be with our significant others 24:7, or even everyday. I know I can’t. Because we are nearing peeks of our sexual life we want, and need, sex all the time. Though I don’t practice masturbation many I know do. I’ve had the pleasure of or lack of, hearing what they use.

One tip: Icy Hot and bengay are a no-no. It might feel good for a moment, but desperado, it hurts more that it provides pleasure. I hear pumps are great. They act like a hand, but feel better. How? I wouldn’t know.

Vibrators are great for some, but if your low on cash – maglites are excellent. Go to K-mart in the batteries aisle. Not that expensive, Yet just as fun as a vibrator.

Though toys are good (supposedly) nothing beats the real thing. I wait for my partner and it all out then. But hey to each his/her own. These are just a few tips suggestions. Do with it what you want.

++++++++++

SLUT

She didn’t want to do it

So she thought, “I’ll scream as loud as I can.”

Her crying didn’t stop him,

He had to be a man.

When he was finally through,

She felt so dirty and unclean.

How could the man she loved

Be so brutal and so mean?

Back in school the football players would shove and,

Grab her butt.

They figured they could get some too,

Considering she was a slut.

No one realized it, and she was unaware too,

In reality it was RAPE that

Was making her so blue.

++++++++++

Reason 1 for the argument against the ten commandments

Peter is the typical gay boy next door. He’s out and everything. Peters neighbors are Louis and Heather. He is quite attracted to Louis and try’s to visit him as much as possible, just to see him. He waters the garden, cuts the grass, even throws parties just to see this Louis. Peter has a gaydar and has picked up on a Louis. In fact Louis is one of the biggest closet cases in the world. He just married her to get his mothero ff his back.

Louis and his wife, Heather, have gone off on a vacation and they ask Peter to house sit. Louis, however, just cam home from an important business meeting in the middle of the week. On Wednesday, Louis returns home and starts talking to Peter. They talk and talk and talk. Suddenly POOF! Peter and Louis wind up in bed.(we won’t go into details)

Now, there is nothing in the ten commandments that says “Do not covet the neighbors husband.” Therefore it is morally acceptable for the gay, unattached man to sleep with the married-to-a-female-closeted man.

Reason 2

In some cultures, God does not exist. Therefore the “word of God” does not exist and the 10 commandments are something not to be followed.

++++++++++

My thoughts are racing,

Where do I start?

I don’t know

What to do with the

Thoughts of my heart.

Why Did MassResistance/PRC Tape "Fistgate"?

Why did the Parents’ Rights Coalition (now MassResistance) decide to tape the 2000 GLSEN-Boston workshop, AKA “Fistgate”?

Below is then-director Scott Whiteman’s December 1999 testimony before the Massachusetts State Board of Education – just months before the March 2000 GLSEN event. State education officials ignored it as not credible.  Read this testimony with the hindsight offered by our Fistgate audio tapes.

Whiteman refers to BAGLY (Boston Alliance of Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Youth) – whose director was a founding member of the Governor’s Commission, a close working ally of Kevin Jennings, and has run the GLBT youth prom for decades. 

At this same Board of Education meeting, the Chairman of the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth (David LaFontaine) even admitted that “he [did] not have statistics showing the number of gay and lesbian students harassed or attacked in schools each year." Yet he went on to say, "We feel it's the responsibility of the state to stop the antigay violence in so many school systems." And so the “Safe Schools” program proceeded, despite the fact that there was no proof of antigay violence. (Boston Globe, “Students urge state to clarify gay rights,” 12-21-99.)

Testimony by Scott Whiteman 

Massachusetts State Board of Education Meeting

December 21, 1999
[See original document here as pdf.]

“We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity, of your shallow dreams and vulgar lies. We shall seduce them in your schools.” - Michael Swift, Gay Community News, Feb. 15, 1987.

On February 10, 1992, the Governor's Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth was created by William Weld's having signed and authorized Executive Order 325, stating as his predominant reason for the institution of this Commission that 30% of completed youth suicides annually are by gay and lesbian youth; and . . . that suicide is the leading cause of death for gay and lesbian youth.

It is not my purpose to extrapolate fully on why the use of a 1989 Health and Human Services report on Youth Suicide was erroneous, rather to merely point out that the report was speculation then and has since been proven false by the Centers for Disease Control. I point this out for two reasons, which I call the Double Lie:

1. that there is a high percentage of youth suicide in the gay community

2. that the Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth is in the schools to prevent youth suicide

The Governor's Commission was founded on false premises with misrepresentation and disregard of the facts about the homosexual lifestyle. The facts were, and remain, that it is not determinable how many of the 5,000 annual youth suicides are by gays or lesbians. The intent of instituting the Commission on these premises was, and still is, to deceive you as to the nature of homosexuality. The Governor's Commission would have you believe that gay youths are beaten or harassed on a daily basis to the point that they contemplate suicide to escape this terrible lifestyle which they were born into. Fiction is fun, but the reality is that all teens, gays and lesbians alike, are resilient to attacks if they occur. However, where are they occurring? In Massachusetts, how many gays are beaten on a daily basis? How many are killed for being gay? These are the real numbers we need to see before the Governor's Commission should be allowed to continue with its supposed agenda, since the foundational 1989 study on Youth Suicide has been declared inconclusive.

What then, since the suicide rate is not so prevalent [as] the agents of the Commission [say], does the Commission, through the Gay Straight Alliances, do? According to the Recommendations in Prevention of Health Problems Among Gay & Lesbian Youth given to the Governor in 1994, the Commission has provided "trainings" on "Sexual Orientation and [the] Coming Out Process." Additionally, when dealing with STDs, information about safer sex should be given "as it relates to gay, lesbian and bisexual youth," with the understanding that "[g]ay, lesbian and bisexual youth may not be able to practice skills crucial to developing [a healthy homosexual relationship]."(1) Exactly what skills ought we be teaching children to practice? Should it be how to keep their fingernails trimmed so they don't tear their lover's rectum while "fisting" him, as the Color Me Healthy brochure from The Fenway instructs? Maybe they ought to be "practicing" on a New Hampshire lakeside weekend retreat and be paid $25 to do it at events sponsored by the Boston Area Gay and Lesbian Youth (BAGLY)? BAGLY itself recognizes that their age ranges from 14 to 22 at its meetings. Have we decided that youths who question their sexuality aren't protected from pederasts simply because they think they might be gay?

I am 25. If I were to approach any of your 14 or 15 year old daughter or granddaughter to "discuss sex" and give her a chance to "really get to know [me] ... on a much deeper level,"' you would rightly come against me and prevent me from meeting your daughter in this, or any, atmosphere. You might even seek to punish me criminally. Yet, we allow our young boys to be preyed upon by older men and call it "diversity." Pedophilia is still a crime in Massachusetts, and consensual sex is still rape when it occurs between a child under the age of 16 and an adult above the age of 18. Who will be to blame when an older man and a young boy lie together, facilitated by the GSAs? [gay/straight alliance clubs in the schools, mandated by the DOE “Safe Schools” program] Keep in mind that homosexuals are too ready to admit that "only" 30% of the pedophilia crimes are committed by homosexuals; stated differently, by 3% of the population.

I have come today not to give you questions to ponder before you allow the Governor's Commission to influence the schools with their call to diversity. Rather, I have come to reveal to you that they are in your schools under the guise of "safety." They have lied to you to get into the schools, lie to parents while in the schools, and you must pray that they are not lying with boys who statutorily cannot consent to sex. If you provide the in-road for these criminal pedophiles, you ought to be held accountable as well for their crimes. I leave you with this thought:

“How many gay men, I wonder, would have missed out on a valuable, liberating experience -- one that initiated them into their sexuality -- if it weren't for so-called molestation?”   - Carl Maves, "Getting Over It," The Advocate, May 5, 1992, p. 85.

This was in a 1992 edition of The Advocate, a "mainstream" gay magazine. According to the gays, you don't have to fear that they are pedophiles, you should thank them.

___________

(1) Prevention of Health Problems Among Gay & Lesbian Youth, p. 21

(2) BAGLY pamphlet announcing meetings and a $25 stipend for those who attend a lakeside weekend retreat.

Kevin Jennings' "Safe Schools" Ploy

Linda Harvey of Mission America was the first to expose the X-rated content in Kevin Jennings' GLSEN-recommended readings back in 2002. See Harvey's

"GLSEN, Corruption and Crime" (2002)

"Why PFLAG and Children Don't Mix" 

"Community Organizing Our Youth for the 'Gay' Agenda" (Dec. 2009) 

In this video, she explains Jennings' revolutionary ploy to bring homosexual indoctrination into our schools:

Safe Schools? Or 'Gay' Tactics of Revolution?

(posted December 14, 2009)

What are 'safe school' programs? Often they are a cover for the 'gay' agenda. Linda Harvey of Mission America discusses the damage homosexual activism is doing in American schools. By using tactics of revolution, people like Kevin Jennings and others are pressuring children to believe homosexuality is acceptable and look out, parents, if you object.

The Fistgate Buck Stops with Kevin Jennings

Fistgate instructor Margot Abels had been with the Massachusetts DOE “Safe Schools” program for seven years by the time she ran the scandalous workshop documented at the GLSEN-Boston conference in 2000. That takes her back to 1993, the year the “safe schools” program began in the DOE. She had run “at least five” workshops similar to Fistgate prior to 2000, possibly going back to 1995 or even before (if she had done one yearly at the GLSEN conference). The Boston Globe reported:

"This is absolutely sanctioned by the department," Margot E. Abels told a reporter as 125 to 150 people* marched nearby in front of department headquarters to protest her firing. [*from the SEIU – see note below.] "It's not like the commissioner clears every word we say, but because we do our work based on research performed by the department, it's understood what we're going in there to do," said Abels, who had been the department's HIV/AIDS coordinator for seven years. "It's standard. There's nothing we did that was a secret. The department has always given us its full support - until now."

Abels, speaking publicly for the first time since being fired May 19 by Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll, said she has led at least five other workshops that were extremely similar to Teach Out 2000, which took place at Tufts University on March 25 - all without protest from her superiors. … (“Protest over a firing,” Raphael Lewis, June 2, 2000; emphasis added.)

It was in 1992 that Kevin Jennings joined radical David LaFontaine at the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth, to “run its education committee” – which set up the “safe schools” programs in the Department of Education. From Jennings’ memoir, Mama’s Boy Preacher’s Son (p. 196):

… in the spring of 1992, [Governor Bill] Weld just decided to appoint one [a Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth] under his own auspices [via Executive Order], and to call it the Governor’s Commission on Gay and Lesbian Youth. David [LaFontaine] was asked to chair it. Having heard about GLSTN [now GLSEN], he was calling me to ask me to run its education committee. It became quickly apparent that many commissioners had little or no knowledge of youth, and that the ones who did came mainly from social services and knew little about schools. Basically, I was being handed the school portfolio and asked what the governor should recommend.

Isn’t it safe to assume that the head of the education committee worked directly with his HIV/AIDS “sexuality educator,” Margot Abels, as they designed the queer sex curriculum? Are we to believe that Jennings’ ideas on content and methods would be less radical than the DOE employees’? When Abels said “it’s understood” what she did in her workshops, are we to believe that her superiors at the DOE understood it, but the mastermind of their “Safe Schools” program, Kevin Jennings, did not?

According to Jennings’ “partner”, while he was a teacher at Concord Academy, Jennings was very close to his students. They came to “worship him.” They called him “Kevin”. “He disrespected the entire, like, Mr. Jennings thing that we all had to grow up with. … No stories were ever forbidden when he was there.” That says something about Jennings’ teaching “methods” – doesn’t it?

LaFontaine, Jennings, Abels. Hardly a “grand conspiracy theory.” What we’re talking about is a small group of hugely dedicated radical activists with a lot of time on their hands to make mischief, who worked very closely together to launch the Massachusetts homosexual youth indoctrination and sexualization program.

Jennings continued to be closely connected with the Boston scene even after he moved to New York to start up a national GLSEN office. The GLSEN-Boston chapter was its “mothership”. He was keynote speaker at the Fistgate conference in 2000. Here is Jennings with Wallace Bachman (see Bachman's photo in conference program, p. 2), then Executive Director of GLSEN-Boston, at the Fistgate event:

[Photo: Massachusetts News, May 2000 Special Report, print ed.]

Margot Abels’ position was “HIV/AIDS educator” at the DOE. One of her supervisors–surely known to Jennings -- was Kim Westheimer, variously listed as “School Program Coordinator” and “Director” of the “Safe Schools” programs in the DOE (at least as early as Gov. Cellucci’s administration 1998-2000, and possibly earlier).

According to a letter by Westheimer (written in 2001), Bachman (GLSEN-Boston director) defended Abels and opposed her firing in 2000. Was Bachman out of step with Jennings, his superior as national GLSEN director? Jennings may have made a CYA statement immediately after the Fistgate story broke, but what about in the months thereafter?

There’s only one HIV/AIDS “queer sex ed” menu, Jennings designed it, and Bachman and Abels picked from it.

In her March 2001 letter (written just prior to that year’s GLSEN-Boston conference, “Fistgate II”), DOE “Safe Schools” program official Westheimer stated, “Our challenge as a community is to find ways for explicit education to take place as well.”

Massachusetts News reported on her letter:

The Westheimer language which supports “explicit” sex education belies the DOE’s official distancing from what went on last year at Fistgate. Interestingly, at the particular workshop last year which was tape-recorded by the Parents’ Rights Coalition (PRC) [now MassResistance] and where kids were given explicit homosexual instruction on fisting and other sexual practices, 55 minutes passed before there was any mention of AIDS/HIV.

Westheimer wrote, “When PRC launched their campaign against GLBT youth last year, GLSEN Boston and Wallace Bachman [GLSEN-Boston Executive Director] in particular were among the few organizations or individuals who spoke up publicly against PRC, against DOE firing, and in support of providing AIDS/HIV and sexuality education for GLBT youth. Not many organizations spoke out in support of GLSEN or the DOE employees who conducted the workshop.” [emphasis added]

When Westheimer wrote about this “explicit education” in HIV/AIDS and queer sexuality workshops, what could she have in mind? How many specifically “queer” sex acts are there? Let’s see: anal intercourse, fisting, tribadism, “water sports”, “pig play,” rimming, sex in the bushes, sucking … Did we leave any out? So the repertoire the GLSEN-Abels workshops would bring up is pretty clear.

Remember: The workshop was billed as queer specific. Abels said the whole point was to answer any question the kids might ask about queer sex when uninhibited. This attitude and approach would not have changed since the time Jennings designed the curriculum in 1992-3. In Kevin’s classroom, “no stories were ever forbidden.”

A Boston Globe story maintains that Abels’ Fistgate workshop was sponsored by GLSEN, not the DOE:

The workshop at Tufts, designed to answer explicit sexual questions from teenagers too embarrassed to ask them in school, took place on a Saturday and was sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Student Education Network, not the education department.

Abels, however, insists that the department knew of and supported her work. The department "shamefully caved in to orchestrated pressure and heinous threats against Ms. Abels at the expense of her constitutional rights," said Betsy Ehrenberg, Abels's attorney. (“Educator fired for sex discussion sues,” Scott S. Greenberger, November 28, 2000.)

But Jennings had a hand in both sponsoring groups, as national executive director of GLSEN, and as designer (and likely ongoing informal consultant, at least) of the DOE’s HIV/AIDS queer sexuality curriculum. Either way, the buck stops with Kevin Jennings.

The Abels workshops would not have changed significantly between 1993 and 2000 (and probably only varied depending on what questions were asked). Abels confirmed this. Queer sex is queer sex. So it’s silly to suggest that Jennings would not have known the general content, topics, and style of the her workshops. 

And yes, Media Matters, there is a grand conspiracy. It’s called the homosexual agenda.

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*Note: On the SEIU role in Abels’ complaint, see:

Boston Globe, “Protest over a firing,” Raphael Lewis, June 2, 2000: "This is absolutely sanctioned by the department," Margot E. Abels told a reporter as 125 to 150 people marched nearby in front of department headquarters to protest her firing. [SEIU]

Bay Windows, “Protest planned over DOE firing of educators in sex-ed workshop,” Laura Kiritsy, June 1-7, 2000:   Recently fired over the flap about a workshop on gay sexuality, former Department of Education employee Margot Abels is fighting for her job and her labor union [SEIU] has organized a June 1 noon protest at DOE headquarters in Malden to draw attention to what it contends was her unwarranted termination.  

Boston Globe, “Arbitrator rules against dismissal of sex educator,” Scott S. Greenberger, August 22, 2001:   The Service Employees International Union challenged Abels's dismissal and took the case to arbitration.