Showing posts with label Gay rights march. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gay rights march. Show all posts

Saturday, February 27, 2010

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


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.






*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.
Gay Liberation button. Location no. 1998.105.11

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.